GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
DOS: Distilling Observable Softmaps of Zipfian Prototypes for Self-Supervised Point Representation
Authors: Mohamed Abdelsamad; Michael Ulrich; Bin Yang; Miao Zhang; Yakov Miron; Abhinav Valada
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Recent advances in self-supervised learning (SSL) have shown tremendous potential for learning 3D point cloud representations without human annotations. However, SSL for 3D point clouds still faces critical challenges due to irregular geometry, shortcut-prone reconstruction, and unbalanced semantics distribution. In this work, we propose DOS (Distilling Observable Softmaps), a novel SSL framework that self-distills semantic relevance softmaps only at observable (unmasked) points. This strategy prevents information leakage from masked regions and provides richer supervision than discrete token-to-prototype assignments. 
To address the challenge of unbalanced semantics in an unsupervised setting, we introduce Zipfian prototypes and incorporate them using a modified Sinkhorn-Knopp algorithm, Zipf-Sinkhorn, which enforces a power-law prior over prototype usage and modulates the sharpness of the target softmap during training. 
DOS outperforms current state-of-the-art methods on semantic segmentation and 3D object detection across multiple benchmarks, including nuScenes, Waymo, SemanticKITTI, ScanNet, and ScanNet200, without relying on extra data or annotations. Our results demonstrate that observable-point softmaps distillation offers a scalable and effective paradigm for learning robust 3D representations.
Constrained Online Convex Optimization with Memory and Predictions
Authors: Mohammed Abdullah; George Iosifidis; Salah Eddine Elayoubi; Tijani Chahed
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: We study Constrained Online Convex Optimization with Memory (COCO-M), where both the loss and the constraints depend on a finite window of past decisions made by the learner. This setting extends the previously studied unconstrained online optimization with memory framework and captures practical problems such as the control of constrained dynamical systems and scheduling with reconfiguration budgets. For this problem, we propose the first algorithms that achieve sublinear regret and sublinear cumulative constraint violation under time-varying constraints, both with and without predictions of future loss and constraint functions. Without predictions, we introduce an adaptive penalty approach that guarantees sublinear regret and constraint violation. When short-horizon and potentially unreliable predictions are available, we reinterpret the problem as online learning with delayed feedback and design an optimistic algorithm whose performance improves as prediction accuracy improves, while remaining robust when predictions are inaccurate. Our results bridge the gap between classical constrained online convex optimization and memory-dependent settings, and provide a versatile learning toolbox with diverse applications.
Expressive Temporal Specifications for Reward Monitoring
Authors: Omar Adalat; Francesco Belardinelli
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Specifying informative and dense reward functions remains a pivotal challenge in Reinforcement Learning, as it directly affects the efficiency of agent training. In this work, we harness the expressive power of quantitative Linear Temporal Logic on finite traces to synthesize reward monitors that generate a dense stream of rewards for runtime-observable state trajectories. By providing nuanced feedback during training, these monitors guide agents toward optimal behaviour and help mitigate the well-known issue of sparse rewards under long-horizon decision making, which arises under the Boolean semantics dominating the current literature. Our framework is algorithm-agnostic and only relies on a state labelling function, and naturally accommodates specifying non-Markovian properties. Empirical results show that our quantitative monitors consistently subsume and, depending on the environment, outperform Boolean monitors in maximizing a quantitative measure of task completion and in reducing convergence time.
ProbLog4Fairness: A Neurosymbolic Approach to Modeling and Mitigating Bias
Authors: Rik Adriaensen; Lucas Van Praet; Jessa Bekker; Robin Manhaeve; Pieter Delobelle; Maarten Buyl
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Operationalizing definitions of fairness is difficult in practice, as multiple definitions can be incompatible while each being arguably desirable. Instead, it may be easier to directly describe algorithmic bias through ad-hoc assumptions specific to a particular real-world task, e.g., based on background information on systemic biases in its context. Such assumptions can, in turn, be used to mitigate this bias during training. Yet, a framework for incorporating such assumptions that is simultaneously principled, flexible, and interpretable is currently lacking. Our approach is to formalize bias assumptions as programs in ProbLog, a probabilistic logic programming language that allows for the description of probabilistic causal relationships through logic. Neurosymbolic extensions of ProbLog then allow for easy integration of these assumptions in a neural network's training process. We propose a set of templates to express different types of bias and show the versatility of our approach on synthetic tabular datasets with known biases. Using estimates of the bias distortions present, we also succeed in mitigating algorithmic bias in real-world tabular and image data. We conclude that ProbLog4Fairness outperforms baselines due to its ability to flexibly model the relevant bias assumptions, where other methods typically uphold a fixed bias type or notion of fairness.
RefiDiff: Progressive Refinement Diffusion for Efficient Missing Data Imputation
Authors: Md Atik Ahamed; Qiang Ye; Qiang Cheng
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Missing values in high-dimensional, mixed-type datasets pose significant challenges for data imputation, particularly under Missing Not At Random (MNAR) mechanisms. Existing methods struggle to integrate local and global data characteristics, limiting performance in MNAR and high-dimensional settings. We propose an innovative framework, RefiDiff, combining local machine learning predictions with a novel Mamba-based denoising network efficiently capturing long-range dependencies among features and samples with low computational complexity. RefiDiff bridges the predictive and generative paradigms of imputation, leveraging pre-refinement for initial warm-up imputations and post-refinement to polish results, enhancing stability and accuracy. By encoding mixed-type data into unified tokens, RefiDiff enables robust imputation without architectural or hyperparameter tuning. RefiDiff outperforms state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods across missing-value settings, demonstrating strong performance in MNAR settings and superior out-of-sample generalization. Extensive evaluations on nine real-world datasets demonstrate its robustness, scalability, and effectiveness in handling complex missingness patterns.
Stabilizing Policy Gradient Methods via Reward Profiling
Authors: Shihab Ahmed; El Houcine Bergou; Yue Wang; Aritra Dutta
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Policy gradient methods, which have been extensively studied in the last decade, offer an effective and efficient framework for reinforcement learning problems. However, their performances can often be unsatisfactory, suffering from unreliable reward improvements and slow convergence, due to high variance in gradient estimations. In this paper, we propose a universal reward profiling framework that can be seamlessly integrated with any policy gradient algorithm, where we selectively update the policy based on high-confidence performance estimations. We theoretically justify that our technique will not slow down the convergence of the baseline policy gradient methods, but with high probability, will result in stable and monotonic improvements of their performance. Empirically, on eight continuous‐control benchmarks (Box2D and MuJoCo/PyBullet), our profiling yields up to 1.5x faster convergence to near‐optimal returns, up to 1.75x reduction in return variance on some setups. Our profiling approach offers a general, theoretically grounded path to more reliable and efficient policy learning in complex environments.
Expressive Power of Graph Transformers via Logic
Authors: Veeti Ahvonen; Maurice Funk; Damian Heiman; Antti Kuusisto; Carsten Lutz
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Transformers are the basis of modern large language models, but relatively little is known about their precise expressive power on graphs. We study the expressive power of graph transformers (GTs) by Dwivedi and Bresson (2020) and GPS-networks by Rampásek et al. (2022), both under soft-attention and average hard-attention. Our study covers two scenarios: the theoretical setting with real numbers and the more practical case with floats. With reals, we show that in restriction to vertex properties definable in first-order logic (FO), GPS-networks have the same expressive power as graded modal logic (GML) with the global modality. With floats, GPS-networks turn out to be equally expressive as GML with the counting global modality. The latter result is absolute, not restricting to properties definable in a background logic. We also obtain similar characterizations for GTs in terms of propositional logic with the global modality (for reals) and the counting global modality (for floats).
PharmaQA: Prompt-Based Molecular Representation Learning via Pharmacophore-Oriented Question Answering
Authors: Chengwei Ai; Qiaozhen Meng; Mengwei Sun; Ruihan Dong; Hongpeng Yang; Shiqiang Ma; Xiaoyi Liu; Cheng Liang; Fei Guo
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Molecular representation plays a central role in computational drug discovery. Pharmacophores, functional groups responsible for molecular bioactivity, have been widely studied in cheminformatics. However, their incorporation into molecular representation learning, particularly in a context reasoning or generalization, remains relatively limited. To address this gap, we propose PharmaQA, a pharmacophore oriented question answering framework that formulates tailored prompts to extract context-aware molecular semantics. Rather than encoding pharmacophore features, PharmaQA learns to answer pharmacophore related queries. This design enables flexible reasoning across diverse tasks, including molecular property prediction, compound-target interaction prediction, and binding affinity estimation. Experimental results on benchmark datasets demonstrate that PharmaQA achieves competitive performance. In a ligand discovery case study using FDA-approved compounds, the framework identified potential inhibitors for three therapeutic targets, with strong docking performance. As a generalizable and modular solution, PharmaQA incorporates pharmacophoric knowledge into molecular embeddings, enhancing both predictive accuracy and interpretability in drug discovery applications.
PAGE: A Unified Approach for Federated Graph Unlearning
Authors: Yuming Ai; Xunkai Li; Jiaqi Chao; Bowen Fan; Zhengyu Wu; Yinlin Zhu; Rong-Hua Li; Guoren Wang
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Federated graph learning (FGL) is a distributive framework for graph representation learning that prioritizes privacy preservation. The right to be forgotten embodies the ethical principle of prioritizing user autonomy over data usage. In the context of FGL, upholding this right requires the method to remove specific entities and their associated knowledge within local subgraphs (Meta Unlearning) and the complete erasure of the entire client (Client Unlearning). We are the first to systematically define the above two unlearn requests in federated graph unlearning. Several studies have attempted to address this challenge, but key limitations persist: incomplete unlearning support and residual knowledge permeation. To this end, we propose a Prototype-guided Adversarial Graph Eraser for universal federated graph unlearning (PAGE), the first unified federated graph unlearning framework that extend to comprehensive unlearning requests. For meta unlearning, we employ the prototype gradients guide initial local unlearn, while adversarial graphs eliminate residual knowledge across the influenced clients. For client unlearning, PAGE exclusively utilizes adversarial graph generation to purge a departed client's influence from the remaining participants. PAGE outperforms existing methods on 8 benchmark datasets. It improves prediction accuracy by 5.08% (client unlearn) and 1.50% (meta-unlearn), with up to 11.84% gain on large-scale graphs.
Furthermore, ablation studies confirm its efficacy as a plug-in for other meta unlearn methods, boosting prediction performance up to 4.49% and unlearning performance up to 7.22%.
InfoQ: Mixed-Precision Quantization via Global Information Flow
Authors: Mehmet Emre Akbulut; Hazem Hesham Yousef Shalby; Fabrizio Pittorino; Manuel Roveri
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Mixed-precision quantization (MPQ) is crucial for deploying deep neural networks on resource-constrained devices, but finding the optimal bit-width for each layer represents a complex combinatorial optimization problem. Current state-of-the-art methods rely on computationally expensive search algorithms or local sensitivity heuristic proxies like the Hessian, which fail to capture the cascading global effects of quantization error. In this work, we argue that the quantization sensitivity of a layer should not be measured by its local properties, but by its impact on the information flow throughout the entire network. We introduce InfoQ, a novel framework for mixed-precision quantization that is training-free in the bit-width search phase. InfoQ assesses layer importance by performing a single forward pass to measure the change in mutual information in the remaining part of the network, thus creating a global sensitivity score. This approach directly quantifies how quantizing one layer degrades the information characteristics of subsequent layers. The resulting scores are used to formulate bit-width allocation as an integer linear programming problem, which is solved efficiently to minimize total sensitivity under a given budget (e.g., model size or BitOps). Our retraining-free search phase provides a superior search-time/accuracy trade-off (using two orders of magnitude less data compared to state-of-the-art methods such as LIMPQ), while yielding up to a 1% accuracy improvement for MobileNetV2 and ResNet18 on ImageNet at high compression rates (14.00x and 10.66x).
Symmetric Aggregation of Conformity Scores for Efficient Uncertainty Sets
Authors: Nabil Alami; Jad Zakharia; Souhaib Ben Taieb
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Access to multiple predictive models trained for the same task, whether in regression or classification, is increasingly common in many applications. Aggregating their predictive uncertainties to produce reliable and efficient uncertainty quantification is therefore a critical but still underexplored challenge, especially within the framework of conformal prediction (CP). While CP methods can generate individual prediction sets from each model, combining them into a single, more informative set remains a challenging problem. To address this, we propose SACP (Symmetric Aggregated Conformal Prediction), a novel method that aggregates nonconformity scores from multiple predictors. SACP transforms these scores into e-values and combines them using any symmetric aggregation function. This flexible design enables a robust, data-driven framework for selecting aggregation strategies that yield sharper prediction sets. We also provide theoretical insights that help justify the validity and performance of the SACP approach. Extensive experiments on diverse datasets show that SACP consistently improves efficiency and often outperforms state-of-the-art model aggregation baselines.
Removing Box-Free Watermarks for Image-to-Image Models via Query-Based Reverse Engineering
Authors: Haonan An; Guang Hua; Hangcheng Cao; Zhengru Fang; Guowen Xu; Susanto Rahardja; Yuguang Fang
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: The intellectual property of deep generative networks (GNets) can be protected using a cascaded hiding network (HNet) which embeds watermarks (or marks) into GNet outputs, known as box-free watermarking. Although both GNet and HNet are encapsulated in a black box (called operation network, or ONet), with only the generated and marked outputs from HNet being released to end users and deemed secure, in this paper, we reveal an overlooked vulnerability in such systems. Specifically, we show that the hidden GNet outputs can still be reliably estimated via query-based reverse engineering, leaking the generated and unmarked images, despite the attacker's limited knowledge of the system. Our first attempt is to reverse-engineer an inverse model for HNet under the stringent black-box condition, for which we propose to exploit the query process with specially curated input images. While effective, this method yields unsatisfactory image quality. To improve this, we subsequently propose an alternative method leveraging the equivalent additive property of box-free model watermarking and reverse-engineering a forward surrogate model of HNet, with better image quality preservation. Extensive experimental results on image processing and image generation tasks demonstrate that both attacks achieve impressive watermark removal success rates (100%) while also maintaining excellent image quality (reaching the highest PSNR of 34.69 dB), substantially outperforming existing attacks, highlighting the urgent need for robust defensive strategies to mitigate the identified vulnerability in box-free model watermarking.
FreDN: Spectral Disentanglement for Time Series Forecasting via Learnable Frequency Decomposition
Authors: Zhongde An; Jinhong You; Jiyanglin Li; Yiming Tang; Wen Li; Heming Du; Shouguo Du
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Time series forecasting is essential in a wide range of real world applications. Recently, frequency-domain methods have attracted increasing interest for their ability to capture global dependencies. However, when applied to non-stationary time series, these methods encounter the spectral entanglement and the computational burden of complex-valued learning. The spectral entanglement refers to the overlap of trends, periodicities, and noise across the spectrum due to spectral leakage and the presence of non-stationarity. However, existing decompositions are not suited to resolving spectral entanglement. To address this, we propose the Frequency Decomposition Network (FreDN), which introduces a learnable Frequency Disentangler module to separate trend and periodic components directly in the frequency domain. Furthermore, we propose a theoretically supported ReIm Block to reduce the complexity of complex-valued operations while maintaining performance. We also re-examine the frequency-domain loss function and provide new theoretical insights into its effectiveness. Extensive experiments on seven long-term forecasting benchmarks demonstrate that FreDN outperforms state-of-the-art methods by up to 10%. Furthermore, compared with standard complex-valued architectures, our real-imaginary shared-parameter design reduces the parameter count and computational cost by at least 50%.
SOSControl: Enhancing Human Motion Generation Through Saliency-Aware Symbolic Orientation and Timing Control
Authors: Ho Yin Au; Junkun Jiang; Jie Chen
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Traditional text-to-motion frameworks often lack precise control, and existing approaches based on joint keyframe locations provide only positional guidance, making it challenging and unintuitive to specify body part orientations and motion timing. To address these limitations, we introduce the Salient Orientation Symbolic (SOS) script, a programmable symbolic framework for specifying body part orientations and motion timing at keyframes.
We further propose an automatic SOS extraction pipeline that employs temporally-constrained agglomerative clustering for frame saliency detection and a Saliency-based Masking Scheme (SMS) to generate sparse, interpretable SOS scripts directly from motion data. Moreover, we present the SOSControl framework, which treats the available orientation symbols in the sparse SOS script as salient and prioritizes satisfying these constraints during motion generation. By incorporating SMS-based data augmentation and gradient-based iterative optimization, the framework enhances alignment with user-specified constraints. Additionally, it employs a ControlNet-based ACTOR-PAE Decoder to ensure smooth and natural motion outputs.
Extensive experiments demonstrate that the SOS extraction pipeline generates human-interpretable scripts with symbolic annotations at salient keyframes, while the SOSControl framework outperforms existing baselines in motion quality, controllability, and generalizability with respect to motion timing and body part orientation control.
Spectral Basis Learning for Expressive Graph Neural Networks in Link Prediction
Authors: Niloofar Azizi; Nils M. Kriege; Nicholas J. A. Harvey; Horst Bischof
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) excel in handling graph-structured data but often underperform in link prediction tasks compared to classical methods, mainly due to the limitations of the commonly used message-passing principle. Notably, their ability to distinguish non-isomorphic graphs is limited by the 1-dimensional Weisfeiler-Lehman test (WL). Our study presents a novel method to enhance the expressivity of GNNs by embedding induced subgraphs into the eigenbasis of the graph Laplacian. We introduce a Learnable Lanczos algorithm with Linear Constraints (LLwLC), proposing two novel subgraph extraction strategies: encoding vertex-deleted subgraphs and applying Neumann eigenvalue constraints. For the former, we demonstrate the ability to distinguish graphs that are indistinguishable by 2-WL, while maintaining efficiency. The latter focuses on link representations enabling differentiation between k-regular graphs and node automorphism, a vital aspect for link prediction tasks. Our approach results in a lightweight architecture, reducing the need for extensive training datasets. Empirically, our method improves performance in challenging link prediction tasks across benchmark datasets, establishing its practical utility and supporting our theoretical findings. Notably, LLwLC achieves 20x and 10x speedups by requiring only 5% and 10% of the data from the PubMed and OGBL-Vessel datasets, while comparing to the state-of-the-art.
Convergence of Fast Policy Iteration in Markov Games and Robust MDPs
Authors: Keith Badger; Jefferson Huang; Marek Petrik
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Markov games and robust MDPs are closely related models that involve computing a pair of saddle point policies. As part of the long-standing effort to develop efficient algorithms for these models, the Filar-Tolwinski (FT) algorithm has shown considerable promise. As our first contribution, we demonstrate that FT may fail to converge to a saddle point and may loop indefinitely, even in small games. This observation contradicts the proof of FT's optimality in the original paper. As our second contribution, we then propose Residual Conditioned Policy Iteration (RCPI). RCPI builds on FT, but is guaranteed to converge to a saddle point. Our numerical results show that RCPI outperforms other convergent algorithms by several orders of magnitude.