GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
Jackpot: Align Actor-Policy Distribution for scalable and stable RL for LLM
Authors: Zhuoming Chen; Hongyi Liu; Yang Zhou; Haizhong Zheng; Beidi Chen
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) has become an increasingly important paradigm for improving large language models (LLMs) on alignment, reasoning, and coding tasks, yet it remains extremely costly. The majority of training time is spent on rollouts. Allowing actor and policy distributions to differ could unlock substantial scalability and efficiency benefits, such as supporting large-batch or asynchronous training, and even enabling a lightweight rollout model. However, existing importance sampling–based corrections for distribution mismatch suffer from an inherent trade-off between stability and training performance. To tackle this problem, we propose Jackpot, which leverages Optimal Budget Rejection Sampling to directly reduce the gap between actor and policy distributions. For efficiency and stability in practical training, We introduce an efficient probability estimation strategy based on Top-$K$ logits with batch bias correction, and designs a stabilized Jackpot-PPO loss that jointly accounts for both the importance sampling ratio and the trust-region constraint in PPO. Empirically, our method achieves stable improvements in large-batch and asynchronous training, and in extreme off-policy training it substantially delays the onset of collapse and delivers competitive performance. Specifically, we achieve 20\% improvement on AMC benchmarks and ~8\% AIME benchmarks over the off-policy baseline under 128$\times$ actor-policy update ratio for Qwen3-4B-Base and 64$\times$ for Qwen3-8B-Base, while achieving greater stability and better performance than prior off-policy RL methods under extreme settings.
Disentanglement of Variations with Multimodal Generative Modeling
Authors: Yijie Zhang; Yiyang Shen; Weiran Wang
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Multimodal data are prevalent across various domains, and learning robust representations of such data is paramount to enhancing generation quality and downstream task performance. To handle heterogeneity and interconnections among different modalities, recent multimodal generative models extract shared and private (modality-specific) information with two separate variables. Despite attempts to enforce disentanglement between these two variables, these methods struggle with challenging datasets where the likelihood model is insufficient. In this paper, we propose Information-Disentangled Multimodal VAE (IDMVAE) to explicitly address this issue, with rigorous mutual information-based regularizations, including cross-view mutual information maximization for extracting shared variables, and a cycle-consistency style loss for redundancy removal using generative augmentations. We further introduce diffusion models to improve the capacity of latent priors. These newly proposed components are complementary to each other. Compared to existing approaches, IDMVAE shows a clean separation between shared and private information, demonstrating superior generation quality and semantic coherence on challenging datasets.
Hey, That's My Model! Introducing Chain & Hash, An LLM Fingerprinting Technique
Authors: Mark Russinovich; Yanan Cai; Ahmed Salem
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Growing concerns over the theft and misuse of Large Language Models (LLMs) underscore the need for effective fingerprinting to link a model to its original version and detect misuse. We define five essential properties for a successful fingerprint: Transparency, Efficiency, Persistence, Robustness, and Unforgeability. We present a novel fingerprinting framework that provides verifiable proof of ownership while preserving fingerprint integrity. Our approach makes two main contributions. First, a "chain and hash" technique that cryptographically binds fingerprint prompts to their responses, preventing collisions and enabling irrefutable ownership claims. Second, we address a realistic threat model in which instruction-tuned models' output distribution can be significantly altered through meta-prompts. By incorporating random padding and varied meta-prompt configurations during training, our method maintains robustness even under significant output style changes. Experiments show that our framework securely proves ownership, resists both benign transformations (e.g., fine-tuning) and adversarial fingerprint removal, and extends to fingerprinting LoRA adapters. We release our code at: https://github.com/microsoft/Chain-Hash.
Syncphony: Synchronized Audio-to-Video Generation with Diffusion Transformers
Authors: Jibin Song; Mingi Kwon; Jaeseok Jeong; Youngjung Uh
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Text-to-video and image-to-video generation have made rapid progress in visual quality, but they remain limited in controlling the precise timing of motion. 
In contrast, audio provides temporal cues aligned with video motion, making it a promising condition for temporally controlled video generation. 
However, existing audio-to-video (A2V) models struggle with fine-grained synchronization due to indirect conditioning mechanisms or limited temporal modeling capacity.
We present Syncphony, which generates 380×640 resolution, 24fps videos synchronized with diverse audio inputs. Our approach builds upon a pre-trained video backbone and incorporates two key components to improve synchronization: 
(1) Motion-aware Loss, which emphasizes learning at high-motion regions; 
(2) Audio Sync Guidance, which guides the full model using a visually aligned off-sync model without audio layers to better exploit audio cues at inference while maintaining visual quality.
To evaluate synchronization, we propose CycleSync, a video-to-audio-based metric that measures the amount of motion cues in the generated video to reconstruct the original audio. Experiments on AVSync15 and The Greatest Hits datasets demonstrate that Syncphony outperforms existing methods in both synchronization accuracy and visual quality.
Variation in Verification: Understanding Verification Dynamics in Large Language Models
Authors: Yefan Zhou; Austin Xu; Yilun Zhou; Janvijay Singh; Jiang Gui; Shafiq Joty
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Recent advances have shown that scaling test-time computation enables large language models (LLMs) to solve increasingly complex problems across diverse domains. One effective paradigm for test-time scaling (TTS) involves LLM generators producing multiple solution candidates, with LLM verifiers assessing the correctness of these candidates without reference answers. In this paper, we study generative verifiers, which perform verification by generating chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning followed by a binary verdict. We systematically analyze verification dynamics across three dimensions -- problem difficulty, generator capability, and verifier generation capability -- through empirical studies on 12 benchmarks across mathematical reasoning, knowledge, and natural language reasoning tasks using 14 open-source models (2B to 72B parameter range) and GPT-4o. Our experiments reveal three key findings about verification effectiveness: (1) Easy problems allow verifiers to more reliably certify correct responses; (2) Weak generators produce errors that are easier to detect than strong generators; (3) Verification ability is generally correlated with the verifier's own problem-solving capability, but this relationship varies with problem difficulty. These findings reveal opportunities for optimizing basic verification strategies in TTS applications. First, given the same verifier, some weak generators can nearly match stronger ones in post-verification TTS performance (e.g., the Gemma2-9B to Gemma2-27B performance gap shrinks by 75.7%). Second, we identify cases where strong verifiers offer limited advantages over weak ones, as both fail to provide meaningful verification gains, suggesting that verifier scaling alone cannot overcome fundamental verification challenges.
Disentangling Knowledge Representations for Large Language Model Editing
Authors: Mengqi Zhang; Zisheng Zhou; Xiaotian Ye; Qiang Liu; Zhaochun Ren; Zhumin Chen; Pengjie Ren
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Knowledge Editing has emerged as a promising solution for efficiently updating embedded knowledge in large language models (LLMs). While existing approaches demonstrate effectiveness in integrating new knowledge and preserving the original capabilities of LLMs, they fail to maintain fine-grained irrelevant knowledge, namely facts that share the same subject as edited knowledge but differ in relation and object. This challenge arises because subject representations inherently encode multiple attributes, causing the target and fine-grained irrelevant knowledge to become entangled in the representation space, and thus vulnerable to unintended alterations during editing. To address this, we propose DiKE, a novel approach that Disentangles Knowledge representations for LLM Editing (DiKE). DiKE consists of two key components: a Knowledge Representation Disentanglement (KRD) module that decomposes the subject representation into target-knowledge-related and -unrelated components, and a Disentanglementbased Knowledge Edit (DKE) module that updates only the target-related component while explicitly preserving the unrelated one. We further derive a closedform, rank-one parameter update based on matrix theory to enable efficient and minimally invasive edits. To rigorously evaluate fine-grained irrelevant knowledge preservation, we construct FINE-KED, a new benchmark comprising fine-grained irrelevant knowledge at different levels of relational similarity to the edited knowledge. Extensive experiments across multiple LLMs demonstrate that DiKE substantially improves fine-grained irrelevant knowledge preservation while maintaining competitive general editing performance.
Combinatorial Bandit Bayesian Optimization for Tensor Outputs
Authors: Jingru Huang; Haijie Xu; Jie Guo; Manrui Jiang; Chen Zhang
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Bayesian optimization (BO) has been widely used to optimize expensive and black-box functions across various domains. However, existing BO methods have not addressed tensor-output functions. To fill this gap, we propose a novel tensor-output BO framework. Specifically, we first introduce a tensor-output Gaussian process (TOGP) with two classes of tensor-output kernels as a surrogate model of the tensor-output function, which can effectively capture the structural dependencies within the tensor. Based on it, we develop an upper confidence bound (UCB) acquisition function to select query points. Furthermore, we introduce a more practical and challenging problem setting, termed combinatorial bandit Bayesian optimization (CBBO), where only a subset of the tensor outputs can be selected to contribute to the objective. To tackle this, we propose a tensor-output CBBO method, which extends TOGP to handle partially observed tensor outputs, and accordingly design a novel combinatorial multi-arm bandit-UCB2 (CMAB-UCB2) criterion to sequentially select both the query points and the output subset. We establish theoretical regret bounds for both methods, guaranteeing sublinear regret. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of our methods.
Near-Optimal Second-Order Guarantees for Model-Based Adversarial Imitation Learning
Authors: Shangzhe Li; Dongruo Zhou; Weitong Zhang
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: We study online adversarial imitation learning (AIL), where an agent learns from offline expert demonstrations and interacts with the environment online without access to rewards. Despite strong empirical results, the benefits of online interaction and the impact of stochasticity remain poorly understood. We address these gaps by introducing a model-based AIL algorithm (MB-AIL) and establish its horizon-free, second-order sample-complexity guarantees under general function approximations for both expert data and reward-free interactions. These second-order bounds provide an instance-dependent result that can scale with the variance of returns under the relevant policies and therefore tighten as the system approaches determinism. Together with second-order, information-theoretic lower bounds on a newly constructed hard-instance family, we show that MB-AIL attains minimax-optimal sample complexity for online interaction (up to logarithmic factors) with limited expert demonstrations and matches the lower bound for expert demonstrations in terms of the dependence on horizon $H$, precision $\epsilon$ and the policy variance $\sigma^2$. Experiments further validate our theoretical findings and demonstrate that a practical implementation of MB-AIL matches or surpasses the sample efficiency of existing methods.
SimuHome: A Temporal- and Environment-Aware Benchmark for Smart Home LLM Agents
Authors: Gyuhyeon Seo; Jungwoo Yang; Junseong Pyo; Nalim Kim; Jonggeun Lee; Yohan Jo
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Oral)

Abstract: We introduce $\textbf{SimuHome}$, a high-fidelity smart home simulator and a benchmark of 600 episodes for LLM-based smart home agents. Existing smart home benchmarks treat the home as a static system, neither simulating how device operations affect environmental variables over time nor supporting workflow scheduling of device commands. SimuHome is grounded in the Matter protocol, the industry standard that defines how real smart home devices communicate and operate. Agents interact with devices through SimuHome's APIs and observe how their actions continuously affect environmental variables such as temperature and humidity. Our benchmark covers state inquiry, implicit user intent inference, explicit device control, and workflow scheduling, each with both feasible and infeasible requests. For workflow scheduling, the simulator accelerates time so that scheduled workflows can be evaluated immediately. An evaluation of 18 agents reveals that workflow scheduling is the hardest category, with failures persisting across alternative agent frameworks and fine-tuning. These findings suggest that SimuHome's time-accelerated simulation could serve as an environment for agents to pre-validate their actions before committing them to the real world.
Beyond Grid-Locked Voxels: Neural Response Functions for Continuous Brain Encoding
Authors: Haomiao Chen; Keith W Jamison; Mert R. Sabuncu; Amy Kuceyeski
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Neural encoding models aim to predict fMRI-measured brain responses to natural images. fMRI data is acquired as a 3D volume of voxels, where each voxel has a defined spatial location in the brain. However, conventional encoding models often flatten this volume into a 1D vector and treat voxel responses as independent outputs. This removes spatial context, discards anatomical information, and ties each model to a subject-specific voxel grid. We introduce the NRF Neural Response Function, a framework that models fMRI activity as a continuous function over anatomical space rather than a flat vector of voxels. NRF represents brain activity as a continuous implicit function: given an image and a spatial coordinate (x, y, z) in standardized MNI space, the model predicts the response at that location. This formulation decouples predictions from the training grid, supports querying at arbitrary spatial resolutions, and enables resolution-agnostic analyses. By grounding the model in anatomical space, NRF exploits two key properties of brain responses: (1) local smoothness—neighboring voxels exhibit similar response patterns; modeling responses continuously captures these correlations and improves data efficiency, and (2) cross-subject alignment—MNI coordinates unify data across individuals, allowing a model pretrained on one subject to be fine-tuned on new subjects. In experiments, NRF outperformed baseline models in both intrasubject encoding and cross-subject adaptation. Achieving high performance while reducing the data size needed by orders of magnitude. To our knowledge, NRF is the first anatomically aware encoding model to move beyond flattened voxels, learning a continuous mapping from images to brain responses in 3D space.
From Abstract to Contextual: What LLMs Still Cannot Do in Mathematics
Authors: Bowen Cao; Dongdong Zhang; Yixia Li; Junpeng Liu; Shijue Huang; Chufan Shi; Hongyuan Lu; Yaokang Wu; Guanhua Chen; Wai Lam; Furu Wei
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Large language models now solve many benchmark math problems at near‑expert levels, yet this progress has not fully translated into reliable performance in real‑world applications. We study this gap through contextual mathematical reasoning, where the mathematical core must be formulated from descriptive scenarios.We introduce CORE-MATH, a benchmark that repurposes AIME and MATH-500 problems into two contextual settings: Scenario Grounding (SG), which embeds abstract problems into realistic narratives without increasing reasoning complexity, and Complexity Scaling (CS), which transforms explicit conditions into sub‑problems to capture how constraints often appear in practice. Evaluating 61 proprietary and open‑source models, we observe sharp drops: on average, open‑source models decline by 13 and 34 points on SG and CS, while proprietary models drop by 13 and 20.  Error analysis shows that errors are dominated by incorrect problem formulation, with formulation accuracy declining as original problem difficulty increases. Correct formulation emerges as a prerequisite for success, and its sufficiency improves with model scale, indicating that larger models advance in both understanding and reasoning. Nevertheless, formulation and reasoning remain two complementary bottlenecks that limit contextual mathematical problem solving. Finally, we find that fine‑tuning with scenario data improves performance, whereas formulation‑only training is ineffective. However, performance gaps are only partially alleviated, highlighting contextual mathematical reasoning as a central unsolved challenge for LLMs.
Difficulty–Diversity Collaborative Filtering for Data-Efficient LLM Fine-Tuning
Authors: Long P. Hoang; Wenxuan Zhang; Wei Lu
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: The performance of fine-tuned language models is heavily influenced by the quality and quantity of their fine-tuning data. While scaling laws suggest that larger models benefit from more data during pretraining, the Less-is-More hypothesis highlights that downstream fine-tuning often requires only a small but high-quality dataset to effectively elicit a model’s pretrained knowledge. However, identifying such premium data, particularly in terms of difficulty and diversity, typically relies on human expertise, and existing methods offer limited guidance for automatic selection from large unannotated corpora. This work presents a novel quantitative framework that formalizes the interplay between question difficulty and diversity, and introduces *Difficulty–Diversity Collaborative Filtering* (DDCF): an automated approach that tailors data selection to the unique characteristics of each language model via collaborative filtering. By leveraging a small seed dataset to predict correctness across a large unannotated corpus, our method reduces the annotation cost by $100-200\times$, while maintaining downstream performance comparable to full-corpus fine-tuning.
From Single to Multi-Granularity: Toward Long-Term Memory Association and Selection of Conversational Agents
Authors: Derong Xu; Yi Wen; Pengyue Jia; Yingyi Zhang; Wenlin Zhang; Yichao Wang; Huifeng Guo; Ruiming Tang; Xiangyu Zhao; Enhong Chen; Tong Xu
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently been widely adopted in conversational agents. However, the increasingly long interactions between users and agents accumulate extensive dialogue records, making it difficult for LLMs with limited context windows to maintain a coherent long-term dialogue memory and deliver personalized responses. While retrieval-augmented memory systems have emerged to address this issue, existing methods often depend on single-granularity memory segmentation and retrieval. This approach falls short in capturing deep memory connections, leading to partial retrieval of useful information or substantial noise, resulting in suboptimal performance. To tackle these limits, we propose MemGAS, a framework that enhances memory consolidation by constructing multi-granularity association, adaptive selection, and retrieval. MemGAS is based on multi-granularity memory units and employs Gaussian Mixture Models to cluster and associate new memories with historical ones. An entropy-based router adaptively selects optimal granularity by evaluating query relevance distributions and balancing information completeness and noise. Retrieved memories are further refined via LLM-based filtering. Experiments on four long-term memory benchmarks demonstrate that MemGAS outperforms state-of-the-art methods on both question answer and retrieval tasks, achieving superior performance across different query types and top-K settings\footnote{https://github.com/Applied-Machine-Learning-Lab/ICLR2026\_MemGAS}.
BAR: Refactor the Basis of Autoregressive Visual Generation
Authors: Zhicong Tang; Dong Chen; Jianmin Bao; Baining Guo
Venue: ICLR 2026 (ICLR 2026 Poster)

Abstract: Autoregressive (AR) models, despite their remarkable successes, encounter limitations in image generation due to sequential prediction of tokens, e.g. local image patches, in a predetermined row-major raster-scan order. Prior works improve AR with various designs of prediction units and orders, however, rely on human inductive biases. This work proposes Basis Autoregressive (BAR), a novel paradigm that conceptualizes tokens as basis vectors within the image space and employs an end-to-end learnable approach to transform basis. By viewing tokens $x_k$ as the projection of image $\mathbf{x}$ onto basis vectors $e_k$, BAR's unified framework refactors fixed token sequences through the linear transform $\mathbf{y}=\mathbf{Ax}$, and encompasses previous methods as specific instances of matrix $\mathbf{A}$. Furthermore, BAR adaptively optimizes the transform matrix with an end-to-end AR objective, thereby discovering effective strategies beyond hand-crafted assumptions. Comprehensive experiments, notably achieving a state-of-the-art FID of 1.15 on the ImageNet-256 benchmark, demonstrate the ability of BAR to overcome human biases and significantly advance image generation, including text-to-image synthesis.