sps
Beyond Perplexity: Let the Reader Select Retrieval Summaries via Spectrum Projection Score
Hu, Zhanghao, Zhu, Qinglin, Qi, Siya, He, Yulan, Yan, Hanqi, Gui, Lin
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown improved generation performance through retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) following the retriever-reader paradigm, which supplements model inputs with externally retrieved knowledge. However, prior work often evaluates RAG holistically, assessing the retriever and reader jointly, making it difficult to isolate the true contribution of retrieval, particularly given the prompt sensitivity of LLMs used as readers. We move beyond perplexity and introduce Spectrum Projection Score (SPS), a lightweight and supervision-free metric that allows the reader to gauge the semantic alignment of a retrieved summary with its hidden representation by comparing the area formed by generated tokens from the summary, and the principal directions of subspace in the reader and to measure the relevance. Building on SPS we present xCompress, an inference-time controller framework that dynamically samples, ranks, and compresses retrieval summary candidates. Extensive experiments on five QA benchmarks with four open-sourced LLMs show that SPS not only enhances performance across a range of tasks but also provides a principled perspective on the interaction between retrieval and generation.
Pareto Actor-Critic for Communication and Computation Co-Optimization in Non-Cooperative Federated Learning Services
Tan, Renxuan, Li, Rongpeng, Yu, Xiaoxue, Chen, Xianfu, Xu, Xing, Zhao, Zhifeng
Federated learning (FL) in multi-service provider (SP) ecosystems is fundamentally hampered by non-cooperative dynamics, where privacy constraints and competing interests preclude the centralized optimization of multi-SP communication and computation resources. In this paper, we introduce PAC-MCoFL, a game-theoretic multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework where SPs act as agents to jointly optimize client assignment, adaptive quantization, and resource allocation. Within the framework, we integrate Pareto Actor-Critic (PAC) principles with expectile regression, enabling agents to conjecture optimal joint policies to achieve Pareto-optimal equilibria while modeling heterogeneous risk profiles. To manage the high-dimensional action space, we devise a ternary Cartesian decomposition (TCAD) mechanism that facilitates fine-grained control. Further, we develop PAC-MCoFL-p, a scalable variant featuring a parameterized conjecture generator that substantially reduces computational complexity with a provably bounded error. Alongside theoretical convergence guarantees, our framework's superiority is validated through extensive simulations -- PAC-MCoFL achieves approximately 5.8% and 4.2% improvements in total reward and hypervolume indicator (HVI), respectively, over the latest MARL solutions. The results also demonstrate that our method can more effectively balance individual SP and system performance in scaled deployments and under diverse data heterogeneity.
Fair Play in the Fast Lane: Integrating Sportsmanship into Autonomous Racing Systems
Huang, Zhenmin, Hao, Ce, Zhan, Wei, Ma, Jun, Tomizuka, Masayoshi
Autonomous racing has gained significant attention as a platform for high-speed decision-making and motion control. While existing methods primarily focus on trajectory planning and overtaking strategies, the role of sportsmanship in ensuring fair competition remains largely unexplored. In human racing, rules such as the one-motion rule and the enough-space rule prevent dangerous and unsportsmanlike behavior. However, autonomous racing systems often lack mechanisms to enforce these principles, potentially leading to unsafe maneuvers. This paper introduces a bi-level game-theoretic framework to integrate sportsmanship (SPS) into versus racing. At the high level, we model racing intentions using a Stackelberg game, where Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is employed to derive optimal strategies. At the low level, vehicle interactions are formulated as a Generalized Nash Equilibrium Problem (GNEP), ensuring that all agents follow sportsmanship constraints while optimizing their trajectories. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in enforcing sportsmanship rules while maintaining competitive performance. We analyze different scenarios where attackers and defenders adhere to or disregard sportsmanship rules and show how knowledge of these constraints influences strategic decision-making. This work highlights the importance of balancing competition and fairness in autonomous racing and provides a foundation for developing ethical and safe AI-driven racing systems.
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The related work section will be rewritten to take this work into account. However, we believe that our method is fundamentally different than theirs as follows: they solve the following problem: given two trees, how similar are they? In contrast, we ask: given two graphs, can we count sub-graphs and smooth the counts? The smoothing is achieved by either using a pre-computed tree (graphlet kernels) or by using a data dependent tree (WL and SP kernels). Once the counts are smoothed, we discard the trees and compute the kernel via a dot product of the smoothed counts. Here are some brief comments: 1) Dependency between sub-structures: Our framework considers dependencies between sub-structures by explicitly encoding them into a DAG.