OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Proximal Policy Optimization with Evolutionary Mutations
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2026
Year: 2026

Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is a widely used reinforcement learning algorithm known for its stability and sample efficiency, but it often suffers from premature convergence due to limited exploration. In this paper, we propose POEM (Proximal Policy Optimization with Evolutionary Mutations), a novel modification to PPO that introduces an adaptive exploration mechanism inspired by evolutionary algorithms. POEM enhances policy diversity by monitoring the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence between the current policy and a moving average of previous policies. When policy changes become minimal, indicating stagnation, POEM triggers an adaptive mutation of policy parameters to promote exploration. We evaluate POEM on four OpenAI Gym environments: CarRacing, MountainCar, BipedalWalker, and LunarLander. Through extensive fine-tuning using Bayesian optimization techniques and statistical testing using Welch's t-test, we find that POEM significantly outperforms PPO on three of the four tasks (BipedalWalker: t=-2.0642, p=0.0495; CarRacing: t=-6.3987, p=0.0002; MountainCar: t=-6.2431, p<0.0001), while performance on LunarLander is not statistically significant (t=-1.8707, p=0.0778). Our results highlight the potential of integrating evolutionary principles into policy gradient methods to overcome exploration-exploitation tradeoffs.
LookBench: A Live and Holistic Open Benchmark for Fashion Image Retrieval
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2026
Year: 2026

In this paper, we present LookBench (We use the term "look" to reflect retrieval that mirrors how people shop -- finding the exact item, a close substitute, or a visually consistent alternative.), a live, holistic and challenging benchmark for fashion image retrieval in real e-commerce settings. LookBench includes both recent product images sourced from live websites and AI-generated fashion images, reflecting contemporary trends and use cases. Each test sample is time-stamped and we intend to update the benchmark periodically, enabling contamination-aware evaluation aligned with declared training cutoffs. Grounded in our fine-grained attribute taxonomy, LookBench covers single-item and outfit-level retrieval across. Our experiments reveal that LookBench poses a significant challenge on strong baselines, with many models achieving below $60\%$ Recall@1. Our proprietary model achieves the best performance on LookBench, and we release an open-source counterpart that ranks second, with both models attaining state-of-the-art results on legacy Fashion200K evaluations. LookBench is designed to be updated semi-annually with new test samples and progressively harder task variants, providing a durable measure of progress. We publicly release our leaderboard, dataset, evaluation code, and trained models.
PULSE: Socially-Aware User Representation Modeling Toward Parameter-Efficient Graph Collaborative Filtering
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2026
Year: 2026

Graph-based social recommendation (SocialRec) has emerged as a powerful extension of graph collaborative filtering (GCF), which leverages graph neural networks (GNNs) to capture multi-hop collaborative signals from user-item interactions. These methods enrich user representations by incorporating social network information into GCF, thereby integrating additional collaborative signals from social relations. However, existing GCF and graph-based SocialRec approaches face significant challenges: they incur high computational costs and suffer from limited scalability due to the large number of parameters required to assign explicit embeddings to all users and items. In this work, we propose PULSE (Parameter-efficient User representation Learning with Social Knowledge), a framework that addresses this limitation by constructing user representations from socially meaningful signals without creating an explicit learnable embedding for each user. PULSE reduces the parameter size by up to 50% compared to the most lightweight GCF baseline. Beyond parameter efficiency, our method achieves state-of-the-art performance, outperforming 13 GCF and graph-based social recommendation baselines across varying levels of interaction sparsity, from cold-start to highly active users, through a time- and memory-efficient modeling process.
Trajectory-Driven Multi-Product Influence Maximization in Billboard Advertising
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2026
Year: 2026

Billboard Advertising has emerged as an effective out-of-home advertising technique, where the goal is to select a limited number of slots and play advertisement content there, with the hope that it will be observed by many people and, effectively, a significant number of them will be influenced towards the brand. Given a trajectory and a billboard database and a positive integer $k$, how can we select $k$ highly influential slots to maximize influence? In this paper, we study a variant of this problem where a commercial house wants to make a promotion of multiple products, and there is an influence demand for each product. We have studied two variants of the problem. In the first variant, our goal is to select $k$ slots such that the respective influence demand of each product is satisfied. In the other variant of the problem, we are given with $\ell$ integers $k_1,k_2, \ldots, k_{\ell}$, the goal here is to search for $\ell$ many set of slots $S_1, S_2, \ldots, S_{\ell}$ such that for all $i \in [\ell]$, $|S_{i}| \leq k_i$ and for all $i \neq j$, $S_i \cap S_j=\emptyset$ and the influence demand of each of the products gets satisfied. We model the first variant of the problem as a multi-submodular cover problem and the second variant as its generalization. To solve the common-slot variant, we formulate the problem as a multi-submodular cover problem and design a bi-criteria approximation algorithm based on the continuous greedy framework and randomized rounding. For the disjoint-slot variant, we proposed a sampling-based approximation approach along with an efficient primal-dual greedy algorithm that enforces disjointness naturally. Extensive experiments with real-world trajectory and billboard datasets highlight the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed solution approaches.
RefProtoFL: Communication-Efficient Federated Learning via External-Referenced Prototype Alignment
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2026
Year: 2026

Federated learning (FL) enables collaborative model training without sharing raw data in edge environments, but is constrained by limited communication bandwidth and heterogeneous client data distributions. Prototype-based FL mitigates this issue by exchanging class-wise feature prototypes instead of full model parameters; however, existing methods still suffer from suboptimal generalization under severe communication constraints. In this paper, we propose RefProtoFL, a communication-efficient FL framework that integrates External-Referenced Prototype Alignment (ERPA) for representation consistency with Adaptive Probabilistic Update Dropping (APUD) for communication efficiency. Specifically, we decompose the model into a private backbone and a lightweight shared adapter, and restrict federated communication to the adapter parameters only. To further reduce uplink cost, APUD performs magnitude-aware Top-K sparsification, transmitting only the most significant adapter updates for server-side aggregation. To address representation inconsistency across heterogeneous clients, ERPA leverages a small server-held public dataset to construct external reference prototypes that serve as shared semantic anchors. For classes covered by public data, clients directly align local representations to public-induced prototypes, whereas for uncovered classes, alignment relies on server-aggregated global reference prototypes via weighted averaging. Extensive experiments on standard benchmarks demonstrate that RefProtoFL attains higher classification accuracy than state-of-the-art prototype-based FL baselines.
Render-of-Thought: Rendering Textual Chain-of-Thought as Images for Visual Latent Reasoning
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2026
Year: 2026

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has achieved remarkable success in unlocking the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). Although CoT prompting enhances reasoning, its verbosity imposes substantial computational overhead. Recent works often focus exclusively on outcome alignment and lack supervision on the intermediate reasoning process. These deficiencies obscure the analyzability of the latent reasoning chain. To address these challenges, we introduce Render-of-Thought (RoT), the first framework to reify the reasoning chain by rendering textual steps into images, making the latent rationale explicit and traceable. Specifically, we leverage the vision encoders of existing Vision Language Models (VLMs) as semantic anchors to align the vision embeddings with the textual space. This design ensures plug-and-play implementation without incurring additional pre-training overhead. Extensive experiments on mathematical and logical reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that our method achieves 3-4x token compression and substantial inference acceleration compared to explicit CoT. Furthermore, it maintains competitive performance against other methods, validating the feasibility of this paradigm. Our code is available at https://github.com/TencentBAC/RoT
M2I2HA: Multi-modal Object Detection Based on Intra- and Inter-Modal Hypergraph Attention
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2026
Year: 2026

Recent advances in multi-modal detection have significantly improved detection accuracy in challenging environments (e.g., low light, overexposure). By integrating RGB with modalities such as thermal and depth, multi-modal fusion increases data redundancy and system robustness. However, significant challenges remain in effectively extracting task-relevant information both within and across modalities, as well as in achieving precise cross-modal alignment. While CNNs excel at feature extraction, they are limited by constrained receptive fields, strong inductive biases, and difficulty in capturing long-range dependencies. Transformer-based models offer global context but suffer from quadratic computational complexity and are confined to pairwise correlation modeling. Mamba and other State Space Models (SSMs), on the other hand, are hindered by their sequential scanning mechanism, which flattens 2D spatial structures into 1D sequences, disrupting topological relationships and limiting the modeling of complex higher-order dependencies. To address these issues, we propose a multi-modal perception network based on hypergraph theory called M2I2HA. Our architecture includes an Intra-Hypergraph Enhancement module to capture global many-to-many high-order relationships within each modality, and an Inter-Hypergraph Fusion module to align, enhance, and fuse cross-modal features by bridging configuration and spatial gaps between data sources. We further introduce a M2-FullPAD module to enable adaptive multi-level fusion of multi-modal enhanced features within the network, meanwhile enhancing data distribution and flow across the architecture. Extensive object detection experiments on multiple public datasets against baselines demonstrate that M2I2HA achieves state-of-the-art performance in multi-modal object detection tasks.
RECAP: Resistance Capture in Text-based Mental Health Counseling with Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2026
Year: 2026

Recognizing and navigating client resistance is critical for effective mental health counseling, yet detecting such behaviors is particularly challenging in text-based interactions. Existing NLP approaches oversimplify resistance categories, ignore the sequential dynamics of therapeutic interventions, and offer limited interpretability. To address these limitations, we propose PsyFIRE, a theoretically grounded framework capturing 13 fine-grained resistance behaviors alongside collaborative interactions. Based on PsyFIRE, we construct the ClientResistance corpus with 23,930 annotated utterances from real-world Chinese text-based counseling, each supported by context-specific rationales. Leveraging this dataset, we develop RECAP, a two-stage framework that detects resistance and fine-grained resistance types with explanations. RECAP achieves 91.25% F1 for distinguishing collaboration and resistance and 66.58% macro-F1 for fine-grained resistance categories classification, outperforming leading prompt-based LLM baselines by over 20 points. Applied to a separate counseling dataset and a pilot study with 62 counselors, RECAP reveals the prevalence of resistance, its negative impact on therapeutic relationships and demonstrates its potential to improve counselors' understanding and intervention strategies.
Robustness of Mixtures of Experts to Feature Noise
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2026
Year: 2026

Despite their practical success, it remains unclear why Mixture of Experts (MoE) models can outperform dense networks beyond sheer parameter scaling. We study an iso-parameter regime where inputs exhibit latent modular structure but are corrupted by feature noise, a proxy for noisy internal activations. We show that sparse expert activation acts as a noise filter: compared to a dense estimator, MoEs achieve lower generalization error under feature noise, improved robustness to perturbations, and faster convergence speed. Empirical results on synthetic data and real-world language tasks corroborate the theoretical insights, demonstrating consistent robustness and efficiency gains from sparse modular computation.
Multi-Task Transformer for Explainable Speech Deepfake Detection via Formant Modeling
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2026
Year: 2026

In this work, we introduce a multi-task transformer for speech deepfake detection, capable of predicting formant trajectories and voicing patterns over time, ultimately classifying speech as real or fake, and highlighting whether its decisions rely more on voiced or unvoiced regions. Building on a prior speaker-formant transformer architecture, we streamline the model with an improved input segmentation strategy, redesign the decoding process, and integrate built-in explainability. Compared to the baseline, our model requires fewer parameters, trains faster, and provides better interpretability, without sacrificing prediction performance.
AlertGuardian: Intelligent Alert Life-Cycle Management for Large-scale Cloud Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2026
Year: 2026

Alerts are critical for detecting anomalies in large-scale cloud systems, ensuring reliability and user experience. However, current systems generate overwhelming volumes of alerts, degrading operational efficiency due to ineffective alert life-cycle management. This paper details the efforts of Company-X to optimize alert life-cycle management, addressing alert fatigue in cloud systems. We propose AlertGuardian, a framework collaborating large language models (LLMs) and lightweight graph models to optimize the alert life-cycle through three phases: Alert Denoise uses graph learning model with virtual noise to filter noise, Alert Summary employs Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) with LLMs to create actionable summary, and Alert Rule Refinement leverages multi-agent iterative feedbacks to improve alert rule quality. Evaluated on four real-world datasets from Company-X's services, AlertGuardian significantly mitigates alert fatigue (94.8\% alert reduction ratios) and accelerates fault diagnosis (90.5\% diagnosis accuracy). Moreover, AlertGuardian improves 1,174 alert rules, with 375 accepted by SREs (32% acceptance rate). Finally, we share success stories and lessons learned about alert life-cycle management after the deployment of AlertGuardian in Company-X.
Erosion Attack for Adversarial Training to Enhance Semantic Segmentation Robustness
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2026
Year: 2026

Existing segmentation models exhibit significant vulnerability to adversarial attacks.To improve robustness, adversarial training incorporates adversarial examples into model training. However, existing attack methods consider only global semantic information and ignore contextual semantic relationships within the samples, limiting the effectiveness of adversarial training. To address this issue, we propose EroSeg-AT, a vulnerability-aware adversarial training framework that leverages EroSeg to generate adversarial examples. EroSeg first selects sensitive pixels based on pixel-level confidence and then progressively propagates perturbations to higher-confidence pixels, effectively disrupting the semantic consistency of the samples. Experimental results show that, compared to existing methods, our approach significantly improves attack effectiveness and enhances model robustness under adversarial training.
Parallel Collaborative ADMM Privacy Computing and Adaptive GPU Acceleration for Distributed Edge Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2026
Year: 2026

Distributed computing has been widely applied in distributed edge networks for reducing the processing burden of high-dimensional data centralization, where a high-dimensional computational task is decomposed into multiple low-dimensional collaborative processing tasks or multiple edge nodes use distributed data to train a global model. However, the computing power of a single-edge node is limited, and collaborative computing will cause information leakage and excessive communication overhead. In this paper, we design a parallel collaborative distributed alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and propose a three-phase parallel collaborative ADMM privacy computing (3P-ADMM-PC2) algorithm for distributed computing in edge networks, where the Paillier homomorphic encryption is utilized to protect data privacy during interactions. Especially, a quantization method is introduced, which maps the real numbers to a positive integer interval without affecting the homomorphic operations. To address the architectural mismatch between large-integer and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) computing, we transform high-bitwidth computations into low-bitwidth matrix and vector operations. Thus the GPU can be utilized to implement parallel encryption and decryption computations with long keys. Finally, a GPU-accelerated 3P-ADMM-PC2 is proposed to optimize the collaborative computing tasks. Meanwhile, large-scale computational tasks are conducted in network topologies with varying numbers of edge nodes. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed 3P-ADMM-PC2 has excellent mean square error performance, which is close to that of distributed ADMM without privacy-preserving. Compared to centralized ADMM and distributed ADMM implemented with Central Processing Unit (CPU) computation, the proposed scheme demonstrates a significant speedup ratio.
SpatialV2A: Visual-Guided High-fidelity Spatial Audio Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2026
Year: 2026

While video-to-audio generation has achieved remarkable progress in semantic and temporal alignment, most existing studies focus solely on these aspects, paying limited attention to the spatial perception and immersive quality of the synthesized audio. This limitation stems largely from current models' reliance on mono audio datasets, which lack the binaural spatial information needed to learn visual-to-spatial audio mappings. To address this gap, we introduce two key contributions: we construct BinauralVGGSound, the first large-scale video-binaural audio dataset designed to support spatially aware video-to-audio generation; and we propose a end-to-end spatial audio generation framework guided by visual cues, which explicitly models spatial features. Our framework incorporates a visual-guided audio spatialization module that ensures the generated audio exhibits realistic spatial attributes and layered spatial depth while maintaining semantic and temporal alignment. Experiments show that our approach substantially outperforms state-of-the-art models in spatial fidelity and delivers a more immersive auditory experience, without sacrificing temporal or semantic consistency. The demo page can be accessed at https://github.com/renlinjie868-web/SpatialV2A.
ExPrIS: Knowledge-Level Expectations as Priors for Object Interpretation from Sensor Data
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2026
Year: 2026

While deep learning has significantly advanced robotic object recognition, purely data-driven approaches often lack semantic consistency and fail to leverage valuable, pre-existing knowledge about the environment. This report presents the ExPrIS project, which addresses this challenge by investigating how knowledge-level expectations can serve as to improve object interpretation from sensor data. Our approach is based on the incremental construction of a 3D Semantic Scene Graph (3DSSG). We integrate expectations from two sources: contextual priors from past observations and semantic knowledge from external graphs like ConceptNet. These are embedded into a heterogeneous Graph Neural Network (GNN) to create an expectation-biased inference process. This method moves beyond static, frame-by-frame analysis to enhance the robustness and consistency of scene understanding over time. The report details this architecture, its evaluation, and outlines its planned integration on a mobile robotic platform.
Incentive-Tuning: Understanding and Designing Incentives for Empirical Human-AI Decision-Making Studies
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2026
Year: 2026

AI has revolutionised decision-making across various fields. Yet human judgement remains paramount for high-stakes decision-making. This has fueled explorations of collaborative decision-making between humans and AI systems, aiming to leverage the strengths of both. To explore this dynamic, researchers conduct empirical studies, investigating how humans use AI assistance for decision-making and how this collaboration impacts results. A critical aspect of conducting these studies is the role of participants, often recruited through crowdsourcing platforms. The validity of these studies hinges on the behaviours of the participants, hence effective incentives that can potentially affect these behaviours are a key part of designing and executing these studies. In this work, we aim to address the critical role of incentive design for conducting empirical human-AI decision-making studies, focusing on understanding, designing, and documenting incentive schemes. Through a thematic review of existing research, we explored the current practices, challenges, and opportunities associated with incentive design for human-AI decision-making empirical studies. We identified recurring patterns, or themes, such as what comprises the components of an incentive scheme, how incentive schemes are manipulated by researchers, and the impact they can have on research outcomes. Leveraging the acquired understanding, we curated a set of guidelines to aid researchers in designing effective incentive schemes for their studies, called the Incentive-Tuning Framework, outlining how researchers can undertake, reflect on, and document the incentive design process. By advocating for a standardised yet flexible approach to incentive design and contributing valuable insights along with practical tools, we hope to pave the way for more reliable and generalizable knowledge in the field of human-AI decision-making.