GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Evolutionary Fusion for Multi-View Clustering
Authors: Yunxiao Zhao; Liang Bai; Xian Yang
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Deep multi-view clustering (MVC) methods achieve impressive performance by effectively capturing complementary information across views, where feature fusion serves as the critical mechanism for maximizing cross-view complementarity. However, most existing methods suffer from rigid dependence on non-adaptive predefined fusion operations, resulting in unverifiable and potentially suboptimal fused feature quality. To resolve these limitations, we propose a novel multi-view clustering framework that learns adaptive hierarchical fusion through an unsupervised evolutionary algorithm. Unlike conventional predefined-fusion strategies, our approach employs tree-structured representations (Fusion Trees) for adaptive feature integration. These Fusion Trees are optimized via our evolutionary mechanism, in which models sharing identical architectures but distinct Fusion Trees are conceptualized as evolutionary individuals. Through implementation of the evolutionarily optimized Fusion Tree, the resultant model generates discriminative representations in accordance with biological evolutionary principles. Comprehensive benchmarking across twelve multi-view datasets validates significant performance gains improvement over state-of-the-art baselines.
Drift Estimation for Diffusion Processes Using Neural Networks Based on Discretely Observed Independent Paths
Authors: Yuzhen Zhao; Yating Liu; Marc Hoffmann
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: This paper addresses the nonparametric estimation of the drift function over a compact domain for a time-homogeneous diffusion process, based on high-frequency discrete observations from N independent trajectories. We propose a neural network-based estimator and derive a non-asymptotic convergence rate, decomposed into a training error, an approximation error, and a diffusion-related term scaling as log N/N. For compositional drift functions, we establish an explicit rate. In the numerical experiments, we consider a drift function with local fluctuations generated by a double-layer compositional structure featuring local oscillations, and show that the empirical convergence rate becomes independent of the input dimension d. Compared to the B-spline method, the neural network estimator achieves better convergence rates and more effectively captures local features, particularly in higher-dimensional settings.
SpecQuant: Spectral Decomposition and Adaptive Truncation for Ultra-Low-Bit LLMs Quantization
Authors: Zhixiong Zhao; Fangxin Liu; Junjie Wang; Chenyang Guan; Zongwu Wang; Li Jiang; Haibing Guan
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: The emergence of accurate open large language models (LLMs) has sparked a push for advanced quantization techniques to enable efficient deployment on end-user devices. In this paper, we revisit the challenge of extreme LLM compression---targeting ultra-low-bit quantization for both activations and weights---from a Fourier frequency domain perspective. We propose SpecQuant, a two-stage framework that tackles activation outliers and cross-channel variance. In the first stage, activation outliers are smoothed and transferred into the weight matrix to simplify downstream quantization. In the second stage, we apply channel-wise low-frequency Fourier truncation to suppress high-frequency components while preserving essential signal energy, improving quantization robustness. Our method builds on the principle that most of the weight energy is concentrated in low-frequency components, which can be retained with minimal impact on model accuracy. To enable runtime adaptability, we introduce a lightweight truncation module during inference that adjusts truncation thresholds based on channel characteristics. On LLaMA-3 8B, SpecQuant achieves 4-bit quantization for both weights and activations, narrowing the zero-shot accuracy gap to only 1.5% compared to full precision, while delivering 2× faster inference and 3× lower memory usage.
Intra-Class Unbiased Prototype Aggregation and Classifier Collaboration for Personalized Federated Learning
Authors: Hao Zheng; Shiyu Song; Zhigang Hu; Meiguang Zheng; Liu Yang; Aikun Xu; Rongchang Zhao; Ruizhi Pu; Ruiyi Fang; Boyu Wang
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Prototype-based personalized federated learning methods have emerged as a promising strategy due to their ability to represent client-specific class characteristics effectively through learned class prototypes. These prototypes capture salient features of client-local data, facilitating personalized model adaptation. However, existing prototype-based aggregation strategies predominantly rely on weighted averaging, implicitly assuming prototype consistency across clients. This assumption neglects the intrinsic heterogeneity and non-independent and identically distributed (non-IID) nature of client data, compelling diverse local prototypes to align toward a singular global prototype and consequently causing significant aggregation bias. Motivated by observations from intra-class feature saliency analysis, we identify that clients inherently emphasize distinct feature regions even for the same class.  To leverage this intra-class diversity, we introduce FedIC, a novel prototype clustering and collaborative classifier optimization approach. Specifically, FedIC first clusters prototypes based on intra-class similarity to form intra-class prototype subspaces, ensuring that aggregation occurs exclusively within each cluster, thus eliminating the bias stemming from forced global unification. To further exploit the benefits of intra-cluster collaboration, we quantify the combined predictive gains of classifiers from clients within the same cluster as a function of classifier combination weights. This targeted aggregation and collaborative optimization strategy effectively circumvents the bias introduced by global alignment. Extensive experiments under various non-IID settings show that FedIC significantly outperforms existing Prototype-based and Clustered PFL Methods.
Graph VQ-Transformer (GVT): Fast and Accurate Molecular Generation via High-Fidelity Discrete Latents
Authors: Haozhuo Zheng; Cheng Wang; Yang Liu
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: The de novo generation of molecules with desirable properties is a critical challenge, where diffusion models are computationally intensive and autoregressive models struggle with error propagation. In this work, we introduce the Graph VQ-Transformer (GVT), a two-stage generative framework that achieves both high accuracy and efficiency. The core of our approach is a novel Graph Vector Quantized Variational Autoencoder (VQ-VAE) that compresses molecular graphs into high-fidelity discrete latent sequences. By synergistically combining a Graph Transformer with canonical Reverse Cuthill-McKee (RCM) node ordering and Rotary Positional Embeddings (RoPE), our VQ-VAE achieves near-perfect reconstruction rates. An autoregressive Transformer is then trained on these discrete latents, effectively converting graph generation into a well-structured sequence modeling problem. Crucially, this mapping of complex graphs to high-fidelity discrete sequences bridges molecular design with the powerful paradigm of large-scale sequence modeling, unlocking potential synergies with Large Language Models (LLMs). Extensive experiments show that GVT achieves state-of-the-art or highly competitive performance across major benchmarks like ZINC250k, MOSES, and GuacaMol, and notably outperforms leading diffusion models on key distribution similarity metrics such as FCD and KL Divergence. With its superior performance, efficiency, and architectural novelty, GVT not only presents a compelling alternative to diffusion models but also establishes a strong new baseline for the field, paving the way for future research in discrete latent-space molecular generation.
Distribution Shift Is Key to Learning Invariant Prediction
Authors: Hong Zheng; Fei Teng
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: An interesting phenomenon arises: Empirical Risk Minimization (ERM) sometimes outperforms methods specifically designed for out-of-distribution tasks. This motivates an investigation into the reasons behind such behavior beyond algorithmic design. In this study, we find that one such reason lies in the distribution shift across training domains. A large degree of distribution shift can lead to better performance even under ERM. Specifically, we derive several theoretical and empirical findings demonstrating that distribution shift plays a crucial role in model learning and benefits learning invariant prediction. Firstly, the proposed upper bounds indicate that the degree of distribution shift directly affects the prediction ability of the learned models. If it is large, the models’ ability can increase, approximating invariant prediction models that make stable predictions under arbitrary known or unseen domains; and vice versa. We also prove that, under certain data conditions, ERM solutions can achieve performance comparable to that of invariant prediction models. Secondly, the empirical validation results demonstrated that the predictions of learned models approximate those of Oracle or Optimal models, provided that the degree of distribution shift in the training data increases.
HGLTR: Hierarchical Knowledge Injection for Calibrating Pre-trained Models in Long-Tail Recognition
Authors: Jinpeng Zheng; Shao-Yuan Li; Gan Xu; Wenhai Wan; Zijian Tao; Songcan Chen; Kangkan Wang
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Long-tail recognition remains challenging for pre-trained foundation models like CLIP, which often suffer from performance degradation under imbalanced data. This stems not only from the overfitting/underfitting issues during fine-tuning but, more fundamentally, from the inherent bias inherited from the long-tail distribution of their massive pre-training datasets. To address this, we propose HGLTR (Hierarchy-Guided Long-Tail Recognition), a novel framework that calibrates pre-trained models by injecting objective class hierarchy knowledge. We argue that the semantic proximity defined by a hierarchy provides a robust, data-independent prior to counteract model bias. Our method is specifically designed for vision-language models' dual-modality architecture. At the feature level, we align image embeddings with a hierarchy-guided text similarity structure. At the classifier level, we employ a distillation loss to regularize predictions using soft labels derived from the hierarchy. This dual-level injection effectively transfers knowledge from head to tail classes. Experiments on ImageNet-LT, Places-LT, and iNaturalist 2018 demonstrate that HGLTR achieves state-of-the-art performance, particularly in tail-classes accuracy, highlighting the importance of leveraging structural priors to calibrate foundation models for real-world data.
Differentially Private Subspace Fine-Tuning for Large Language Models
Authors: Lele Zheng; Xiang Wang; Tao Zhang; Yang Cao; Ke Cheng; Yulong Shen
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Fine-tuning large language models on downstream tasks is crucial for realizing their cross-domain potential but often relies on sensitive data, raising privacy concerns. 
Differential privacy (DP) offers rigorous privacy guarantees and has been widely adopted in fine-tuning; however, naively injecting noise across the high-dimensional parameter space creates perturbations with large norms, degrading performance and destabilizing training. 
To address this issue, we propose DP-SFT, a two-stage subspace fine-tuning method that substantially reduces noise magnitude while preserving formal DP guarantees. Our intuition is that, during fine-tuning, significant parameter updates lie within a low-dimensional, task-specific subspace, while other directions change minimally. 
Hence, we only inject DP noise into this subspace to protect privacy without perturbing irrelevant parameters. 
In phase one, we identify the subspace by analyzing principal gradient directions to capture task-specific update signals. 
In phase two, we project full gradients onto this subspace, add DP noise, and map the perturbed gradients back to the original parameter space for model updates, markedly lowering noise impact. 
Experiments on multiple datasets demonstrate that DP-SFT enhances accuracy and stability under rigorous DP constraints, accelerates convergence, and achieves substantial gains over DP fine-tuning baselines.
DGTF: Cross-Domain Decentralized Graph Learning with Topology-Aware Knowledge Fusion
Authors: Ruisheng Zheng; Mingyi Li; Xiao Zhang; Hongjian Shi; Yanjie Fu; Yuan Yuan; Dongxiao Yu
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Cross-Domain Decentralized Graph Learning (CD-DGL) is a promising paradigm that enables efficient, privacy-preserving collaboration among multiple parties to unlock the value of cross-domain graph data. However, it faces two fundamental challenges. First, inconsistent label spaces across domains drive local models to learn domain-specific biases, which means domain-invariant topological knowledge extraction beyond label constraints is difficult. Second,  existing domain topology shift and heterogeneous model architectures make direct model aggregation infeasible. To address these issues, we first use Extended Persistent Homology (EPH) to reveal and quantify the problem of domain topology shift induced by the cross-domain setting. Building on this insight, we present Decentralized Graph Learning with Topology-Aware Knowledge Fusion (DGTF), a novel framework designed to facilitate positive topological knowledge transfer in CD-DGL. Our framework achieves this by integrating two core strategies: first, a contrastive learning-based approach to extract task-agnostic topological knowledge, and second, a topology-aware, model-independent knowledge fusion method to effectively integrate this topological information. Extensive experiments conducted under various cross-domain and model-heterogeneous settings validate the superiority and effectiveness of our proposed framework.
BiHiTo: Biomolecular Hierarchy-inspired Tokenization
Authors: Ruochong Zheng; Yutian Liu; Yian Zhao; Zhiwei Nie; Xuehan Hou; Chang Liu; Siwei Ma; Youdong Mao; Jie Chen
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Three-dimensional atomic arrangements of biomolecules are key to demystifying biological functions. The rapid expansion of accessible structural data, driven by advances in AI for science, highlights the critical challenge of efficiently modeling large-scale biomolecular structures, which are high-dimensional systems shaped by biological assembly principles. To address this, we introduce BiHiTo, a multi-level Biomolecular Hierarchy-inspired Tokenizer that intrinsically mimics natural biological assembly hierarchies. Specifically, we design a multi-codebook quantizer that mirrors the natural hierarchy of biomolecular structure, enabling simultaneous capture of representations spanning atomic motifs to global conformational variations. This hierarchical alignment markedly improves the biological interpretability and reconstruction fidelity of biomolecular structure.Extensive experiments demonstrate that BiHiTo delivers state-of-the-art performance and robust generalization across molecular dynamics trajectories and macromolecular complexes, facilitating advances in structure generation and dynamic conformation exploration. In the reconstruction of the CASP14 and OOD test set FastFolding protein multi-conformation data, our method achieves a 17% and 51% reduction in RMSD compared to Bio2Token, respectively.
GeM-VG: Towards Generalized Multi-image Visual Grounding with Multimodal Large Language Models
Authors: Shurong Zheng; Yousong Zhu; Hongyin Zhao; Fan Yang; Yufei Zhan; Ming Tang; Jinqiao Wang
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have demonstrated impressive progress in single-image grounding and general multi-image understanding. Recently, some methods begin to address multi-image grounding. However, they are constrained by single-target localization and limited types of practical tasks, due to the lack of unified modeling for generalized grounding tasks. Therefore, we propose GeM-VG, an MLLM capable of Generalized Multi-image Visual Grounding. To support this, we systematically categorize and organize existing multi-image grounding tasks according to cognitive demands and introduce the MG-Data-240K dataset, addressing the limitations of existing datasets regarding target quantity and image relation. To tackle the challenges of robustly handling diverse multi-image grounding tasks, we further propose a hybrid reinforcement finetuning strategy that integrates chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning and direct answering, considering their complementary strengths. This strategy adopts an R1-like algorithm guided by a carefully designed rule-based reward, effectively enhancing the model’s overall perception and reasoning capabilities. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superior generalized grounding capabilities of our model. For multi-image grounding, it outperforms the previous leading MLLMs by 2.0% and 9.7% on MIG-Bench and MC-Bench, respectively. In single-image grounding, it achieves a 9.1% improvement over the base model on ODINW. Furthermore, our model retains strong capabilities in general multi-image understanding.
Bidirectional Noise Injection: Enhancing Diffusion Models via Coordinated Input-Output Perturbation
Authors: Tianyi Zheng; Jiayang Gao; Peng-Tao Jiang; Fengxiang Yang; Ben Wan; Hao Zhang; Jinwei Chen; Jia Wang; Bo Li
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Diffusion models have demonstrated remarkable success in image generation, yet a persistent challenge remains: the bias between model predictions and the target distribution. In this paper, we propose a Bidirectional Noise Injection framework for enhancing diffusion models, implemented via Coordinated Input-Output Perturbation (CIOP). Our approach mitigates this bias by randomly applying synchronized noise injection to both the model inputs and the prediction targets during the training stage. This stochastic, synchronized noise injected acts as a smoothing mechanism that effectively reduces the 2-Wasserstein distance between the predicted and target distributions, as substantiated by our theoretical analysis based on optimal transport theory. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmark datasets and various generative tasks demonstrate that our method improves generation quality and training efficiency without incurring additional computational cost. Furthermore, the design of CIOP enables seamless integration with existing diffusion model improvements and advanced frameworks, thereby broadening its applicability. These results highlight the potential of Bidirectional Noise Injection via CIOP to alleviate bias in diffusion-based generative models across a wide range of settings.
Sarcopenia Assessment Model Based on Dual-Source Modal Graph
Authors: Wenxian Zheng; Zhi Chen; Qiaoqin Li; Rongyao Hu; Yongguo Liu
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Accurate muscle-mass assessment is crucial for staging and managing sarcopenia, yet existing methods suffer from modality-specific limitations and weak integration of muscle function indicators. To solve these limitations, we propose a Dual-source Features Graph for Sarcopenia Evaluation (DFGSE) to synergize high- and low-energy whole-body Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA) images, local high-energy DXA images, and blood-borne biochemical markers. Specifically, the feature extraction module employs dual-energy feature extraction to disentangle soft-tissue and skeletal cues from low-energy images, while skeleton-aware detection extracts joint features from high-energy images. It yields global and local DXA embeddings, complemented by blood-test representations. In the relevance exploration module, inter- and intra-modality correlations are computed via bilinear transformations to form adjacency matrices for the global, local, and blood modality representations. These matrices seed the Multi-type Multi-relation Graph Convolutional Network (MMGCN) – the core of the relation learning module – which captures both direct and indirect interactions among modalities through relation-aware message passing. Finally, the graph-fused representations are used by a muscle-mass prediction head trained with cross-entropy loss. Experiments on the public MURA dataset and two independent sarcopenia cohorts demonstrate that DFGSE consistently outperforms machine learning and state-of-the-art graph-based methods, in terms of four evaluation metrics for classification task.
First-Order Error Matters: Accurate Compensation for Quantized Large Language Models
Authors: Xingyu Zheng; Haotong Qin; Yuye Li; Haoran Chu; Jiakai Wang; Jinyang Guo; Michele Magno; Xianglong Liu
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Post-training quantization (PTQ) offers an efficient approach to compressing large language models (LLMs), significantly reducing memory access and computational costs. Existing compensation-based weight calibration methods often rely on a second-order Taylor expansion to model quantization error, under the assumption that the first-order term is negligible in well-trained full-precision models. However, we reveal that the progressive compensation process introduces accumulated first-order deviations between latent weights and their full-precision counterparts, making this assumption fundamentally flawed. To address this, we propose FOEM, a novel PTQ method that explicitly incorporates first-order gradient terms to improve quantization error compensation. 
FOEM approximates gradients by performing a first-order Taylor expansion around the pre-quantization weights. This yields an approximation based on the difference between latent and full-precision weights as well as the Hessian matrix. When substituted into the theoretical solution, the formulation eliminates the need to explicitly compute the Hessian, thereby avoiding the high computational cost and limited generalization of backpropagation-based gradient methods. This design introduces only minimal additional computational overhead.
Extensive experiments across a wide range of models and benchmarks demonstrate that FOEM consistently outperforms the classical GPTQ method. In 3-bit weight-only quantization, FOEM reduces the perplexity of Llama3-8B by 17.3% and increases the 5-shot MMLU accuracy from 53.8% achieved by GPTAQ to 56.1%. Moreover, FOEM can be seamlessly combined with advanced techniques such as SpinQuant, delivering additional gains under the challenging W4A4KV4 setting and further narrowing the performance gap with full-precision baselines, surpassing existing state-of-the-art methods.