OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Spend Your Budget Wisely: Towards an Intelligent Distribution of the Privacy Budget in Differentially Private Text Rewriting
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2025
Year: 2025

The task of $\textit{Differentially Private Text Rewriting}$ is a class of text privatization techniques in which (sensitive) input textual documents are $\textit{rewritten}$ under Differential Privacy (DP) guarantees. The motivation behind such methods is to hide both explicit and implicit identifiers that could be contained in text, while still retaining the semantic meaning of the original text, thus preserving utility. Recent years have seen an uptick in research output in this field, offering a diverse array of word-, sentence-, and document-level DP rewriting methods. Common to these methods is the selection of a privacy budget (i.e., the $\varepsilon$ parameter), which governs the degree to which a text is privatized. One major limitation of previous works, stemming directly from the unique structure of language itself, is the lack of consideration of $\textit{where}$ the privacy budget should be allocated, as not all aspects of language, and therefore text, are equally sensitive or personal. In this work, we are the first to address this shortcoming, asking the question of how a given privacy budget can be intelligently and sensibly distributed amongst a target document. We construct and evaluate a toolkit of linguistics- and NLP-based methods used to allocate a privacy budget to constituent tokens in a text document. In a series of privacy and utility experiments, we empirically demonstrate that given the same privacy budget, intelligent distribution leads to higher privacy levels and more positive trade-offs than a naive distribution of $\varepsilon$. Our work highlights the intricacies of text privatization with DP, and furthermore, it calls for further work on finding more efficient ways to maximize the privatization benefits offered by DP in text rewriting.
Negation: A Pink Elephant in the Large Language Models' Room?
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2025
Year: 2025

Negations are key to determining sentence meaning, making them essential for logical reasoning. Despite their importance, negations pose a substantial challenge for large language models (LLMs) and remain underexplored. We constructed and published two new textual entailment datasets NoFEVER-ML and NoSNLI-ML in four languages (English, Czech, German, and Ukrainian) with examples differing in negation. It allows investigation of the root causes of the negation problem and its exemplification: how popular LLM model properties and language impact their inability to handle negation correctly. Contrary to previous work, we show that increasing the model size may improve the models' ability to handle negations. Furthermore, we find that both the models' reasoning accuracy and robustness to negation are language-dependent and that the length and explicitness of the premise have an impact on robustness. There is better accuracy in projective language with fixed order, such as English, than in non-projective ones, such as German or Czech. Our entailment datasets pave the way to further research for explanation and exemplification of the negation problem, minimization of LLM hallucinations, and improvement of LLM reasoning in multilingual settings.
Instance-Level Data-Use Auditing of Visual ML Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2025
Year: 2025

The growing trend of legal disputes over the unauthorized use of data in machine learning (ML) systems highlights the urgent need for reliable data-use auditing mechanisms to ensure accountability and transparency in ML. We present the first proactive, instance-level, data-use auditing method designed to enable data owners to audit the use of their individual data instances in ML models, providing more fine-grained auditing results than previous work. To do so, our research generalizes previous work integrating black-box membership inference and sequential hypothesis testing, expanding its scope of application while preserving the quantifiable and tunable false-detection rate that is its hallmark. We evaluate our method on three types of visual ML models: image classifiers, visual encoders, and vision-language models (Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) and Bootstrapping Language-Image Pretraining (BLIP) models). In addition, we apply our method to evaluate the performance of two state-of-the-art approximate unlearning methods. As a noteworthy second contribution, our work reveals that neither method successfully removes the influence of the unlearned data instances from image classifiers and CLIP models, even if sacrificing model utility by $10\%$.
STADE: Standard Deviation as a Pruning Metric
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have become very widespread and are used to solve a wide variety of tasks. To successfully handle these tasks, LLMs require longer training times and larger model sizes. This makes LLMs ideal candidates for pruning methods that reduce computational demands while maintaining performance. Previous methods require a retraining phase after pruning to maintain the original model's performance. However, state-of-the-art pruning methods, such as Wanda, prune the model without retraining, making the pruning process faster and more efficient. Building upon Wanda's work, this study provides a theoretical explanation of why the method is effective and leverages these insights to enhance the pruning process. Specifically, a theoretical analysis of the pruning problem reveals a common scenario in Machine Learning where Wanda is the optimal pruning method. Furthermore, this analysis is extended to cases where Wanda is no longer optimal, leading to the development of a new method, STADE, based on the standard deviation of the input. From a theoretical standpoint, STADE demonstrates better generality across different scenarios. Finally, extensive experiments on Llama and Open Pre-trained Transformers (OPT) models validate these theoretical findings, showing that depending on the training conditions, Wanda's optimal performance varies as predicted by the theoretical framework. These insights contribute to a more robust understanding of pruning strategies and their practical implications. Code is available at: https://github.com/Coello-dev/STADE/
Entropy-guided sequence weighting for efficient exploration in RL-based LLM fine-tuning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

We introduce Entropy-Guided Sequence Weighting (EGSW), a novel approach that enhances the exploration-exploitation tradeoff by dynamically assigning weights to generated outputs based on their advantage and entropy for Reinforcement Learning-based Large Language Model fine-tuning. EGSW integrates entropy regularization with advantage-based weighting to balance policy updates, enabling efficient exploration in high-dimensional state spaces. By employing temperature-scaled softmax weighting over sequences, EGSW prioritizing high-reward, high-uncertainty steps while maintaining training stability. Although originally developed to improve Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) during large language model (LLM) fine-tuning, EGSW is generalizable to other reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms and can be implemented in both step-wise and trajectory-wise settings. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that EGSW enhances GRPO reasoning ability, yielding improvements in sample efficiency. Future work will explore the application of EGSW to advanced RL methodologies.
Learnable cut flow for high energy physics
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Neural networks have emerged as a powerful paradigm for tasks in high energy physics, yet their opaque training process renders them as a black box. In contrast, the traditional cut flow method offers simplicity and interpretability but requires extensive manual tuning to identify optimal cut boundaries. To merge the strengths of both approaches, we propose the Learnable Cut Flow (LCF), a neural network that transforms the traditional cut selection into a fully differentiable, data-driven process. LCF implements two cut strategies-parallel, where observable distributions are treated independently, and sequential, where prior cuts shape subsequent ones-to flexibly determine optimal boundaries. Building on this strategy, we introduce the Learnable Importance, a metric that quantifies feature importance and adjusts their contributions to the loss accordingly, offering model-driven insights unlike ad-hoc metrics. To ensure differentiability, a modified loss function replaces hard cuts with mask operations, preserving data shape throughout the training process. LCF is tested on six varied mock datasets and a realistic diboson vs. QCD dataset. Results demonstrate that LCF 1. accurately learns cut boundaries across typical feature distributions in both parallel and sequential strategies, 2. assigns higher importance to discriminative features with minimal overlap, 3. handles redundant or correlated features robustly, and 4. performs effectively in real-world scenarios. In the diboson dataset, LCF initially underperforms boosted decision trees and multiplayer perceptrons when using all observables. LCF bridges the gap between traditional cut flow method and modern black-box neural networks, delivering actionable insights into the training process and feature importance. Source code and experimental data are available at https://github.com/Star9daisy/learnable-cut-flow.
Cross-Technology Generalization in Synthesized Speech Detection: Evaluating AST Models with Modern Voice Generators
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2025
Year: 2025

This paper evaluates the Audio Spectrogram Transformer (AST) architecture for synthesized speech detection, with focus on generalization across modern voice generation technologies. Using differentiated augmentation strategies, the model achieves 0.91% EER overall when tested against ElevenLabs, NotebookLM, and Minimax AI voice generators. Notably, after training with only 102 samples from a single technology, the model demonstrates strong cross-technology generalization, achieving 3.3% EER on completely unseen voice generators. This work establishes benchmarks for rapid adaptation to emerging synthesis technologies and provides evidence that transformer-based architectures can identify common artifacts across different neural voice synthesis methods, contributing to more robust speech verification systems.
Automated UX Insights from User Research Videos by Integrating Facial Emotion and Text Sentiment
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2025
Year: 2025

Emotion recognition technology has been studied from the past decade. With its growing importance and applications such as customer service, medical, education, etc., this research study aims to explore its potential and importance in the field of User experience evaluation. Recognizing and keeping track of user emotions in user research video is important to understand user needs and expectations from a service/product. Little research has been done that focuses on automating emotion extraction from a video where more than one modality has been incorporated in the field of UX. The study aims at implementing different modalities such as facial emotion recognition, speech-to-text and text-based emotion recognition for capturing emotional nuances from a user research video and extract meaningful actionable insights. For selection of facial emotion recognition model, 10 pre-trained models were evaluated on three benchmark datasets i.e. FER-2013, AffectNet and CK+, selecting the model with most generalization ability. To extract speech and convert to text, OpenAI's Whisper model was implemented and finally the emotions from text were recognized using a pre-trained model available at HuggingFace website having an evaluation accuracy more than 95%. The study also integrates the gathered data using temporal alignment and fusion for deeper and contextual insights. The study further demonstrates a way of automating data analysis through PandasAI Python library where OpenAI's GPT-4o model was implemented along with a discussion on other possible solutions. This study is an attempt to demonstrate a proof of concept where automated meaningful insights are extracted from a video based on user emotions.
Benchmarking Ultra-Low-Power $μ$NPUs
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Efficient on-device neural network (NN) inference offers predictable latency, improved privacy and reliability, and lower operating costs for vendors than cloud-based inference. This has sparked recent development of microcontroller-scale NN accelerators, also known as neural processing units ($μ$NPUs), designed specifically for ultra-low-power applications. We present the first comparative evaluation of a number of commercially-available $μ$NPUs, including the first independent benchmarks for multiple platforms. To ensure fairness, we develop and open-source a model compilation pipeline supporting consistent benchmarking of quantized models across diverse microcontroller hardware. Our resulting analysis uncovers both expected performance trends as well as surprising disparities between hardware specifications and actual performance, including certain $μ$NPUs exhibiting unexpected scaling behaviors with model complexity. This work provides a foundation for ongoing evaluation of $μ$NPU platforms, alongside offering practical insights for both hardware and software developers in this rapidly evolving space.
On the Mistaken Assumption of Interchangeable Deep Reinforcement Learning Implementations
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2025
Year: 2025

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is a paradigm of artificial intelligence where an agent uses a neural network to learn which actions to take in a given environment. DRL has recently gained traction from being able to solve complex environments like driving simulators, 3D robotic control, and multiplayer-online-battle-arena video games. Numerous implementations of the state-of-the-art algorithms responsible for training these agents, like the Deep Q-Network (DQN) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithms, currently exist. However, studies make the mistake of assuming implementations of the same algorithm to be consistent and thus, interchangeable. In this paper, through a differential testing lens, we present the results of studying the extent of implementation inconsistencies, their effect on the implementations' performance, as well as their impact on the conclusions of prior studies under the assumption of interchangeable implementations. The outcomes of our differential tests showed significant discrepancies between the tested algorithm implementations, indicating that they are not interchangeable. In particular, out of the five PPO implementations tested on 56 games, three implementations achieved superhuman performance for 50% of their total trials while the other two implementations only achieved superhuman performance for less than 15% of their total trials. As part of a meticulous manual analysis of the implementations' source code, we analyzed implementation discrepancies and determined that code-level inconsistencies primarily caused these discrepancies. Lastly, we replicated a study and showed that this assumption of implementation interchangeability was sufficient to flip experiment outcomes. Therefore, this calls for a shift in how implementations are being used.
Generative Latent Neural PDE Solver using Flow Matching
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Autoregressive next-step prediction models have become the de-facto standard for building data-driven neural solvers to forecast time-dependent partial differential equations (PDEs). Denoise training that is closely related to diffusion probabilistic model has been shown to enhance the temporal stability of neural solvers, while its stochastic inference mechanism enables ensemble predictions and uncertainty quantification. In principle, such training involves sampling a series of discretized diffusion timesteps during both training and inference, inevitably increasing computational overhead. In addition, most diffusion models apply isotropic Gaussian noise on structured, uniform grids, limiting their adaptability to irregular domains. We propose a latent diffusion model for PDE simulation that embeds the PDE state in a lower-dimensional latent space, which significantly reduces computational costs. Our framework uses an autoencoder to map different types of meshes onto a unified structured latent grid, capturing complex geometries. By analyzing common diffusion paths, we propose to use a coarsely sampled noise schedule from flow matching for both training and testing. Numerical experiments show that the proposed model outperforms several deterministic baselines in both accuracy and long-term stability, highlighting the potential of diffusion-based approaches for robust data-driven PDE learning.
Advancing DevSecOps in SMEs: Challenges and Best Practices for Secure CI/CD Pipelines
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2025
Year: 2025

This study evaluates the adoption of DevSecOps among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), identifying key challenges, best practices, and future trends. Through a mixed methods approach backed by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory, we analyzed survey data from 405 SME professionals, revealing that while 68% have implemented DevSecOps, adoption is hindered by technical complexity (41%), resource constraints (35%), and cultural resistance (38%). Despite strong leadership prioritization of security (73%), automation gaps persist, with only 12% of organizations conducting security scans per commit. Our findings highlight a growing integration of security tools, particularly API security (63%) and software composition analysis (62%), although container security adoption remains low (34%). Looking ahead, SMEs anticipate artificial intelligence and machine learning to significantly influence DevSecOps, underscoring the need for proactive adoption of AI-driven security enhancements. Based on our findings, this research proposes strategic best practices to enhance CI/CD pipeline security including automation, leadership-driven security culture, and cross-team collaboration.
Sentiment Classification of Thai Central Bank Press Releases Using Supervised Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Central bank communication plays a critical role in shaping economic expectations and monetary policy effectiveness. This study applies supervised machine learning techniques to classify the sentiment of press releases from the Bank of Thailand, addressing gaps in research that primarily focus on lexicon-based approaches. My findings show that supervised learning can be an effective method, even with smaller datasets, and serves as a starting point for further automation. However, achieving higher accuracy and better generalization requires a substantial amount of labeled data, which is time-consuming and demands expertise. Using models such as Naïve Bayes, Random Forest and SVM, this study demonstrates the applicability of machine learning for central bank sentiment analysis, with English-language communications from the Thai Central Bank as a case study.
The moment polytope of matrix multiplication is not maximal
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2025
Year: 2025

Moment polytopes of tensors, the study of which is deeply rooted in invariant theory, representation theory and symplectic geometry, have found relevance in numerous places, from quantum information (entanglement polytopes) and algebraic complexity theory (GCT program and the complexity of matrix multiplication) to optimization (scaling algorithms). Towards an open problem in algebraic complexity theory, we prove separations between the moment polytopes of matrix multiplication tensors and unit tensors. As a consequence, we find that matrix multiplication moment polytopes are not maximal, i.e. are strictly contained in the corresponding Kronecker polytope. As another consequence, we obtain a no-go result for a natural operational characterization of moment polytope inclusion in terms of asymptotic restriction. We generalize the separation and non-maximality to moment polytopes of iterated matrix multiplication tensors. Our result implies that tensor networks where multipartite entanglement structures beyond two-party entanglement are allowed can go beyond projected entangled-pair states (PEPS) in terms of expressivity. Our proof characterizes membership of uniform points in moment polytopes of tensors, and establishes a connection to polynomial multiplication tensors via the minrank of matrix subspaces. As a result of independent interest, we extend these techniques to obtain a new proof of the optimal border subrank bound for matrix multiplication.
Exploring the Effectiveness of Multi-stage Fine-tuning for Cross-encoder Re-rankers
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2025
Year: 2025

State-of-the-art cross-encoders can be fine-tuned to be highly effective in passage re-ranking. The typical fine-tuning process of cross-encoders as re-rankers requires large amounts of manually labelled data, a contrastive learning objective, and a set of heuristically sampled negatives. An alternative recent approach for fine-tuning instead involves teaching the model to mimic the rankings of a highly effective large language model using a distillation objective. These fine-tuning strategies can be applied either individually, or in sequence. In this work, we systematically investigate the effectiveness of point-wise cross-encoders when fine-tuned independently in a single stage, or sequentially in two stages. Our experiments show that the effectiveness of point-wise cross-encoders fine-tuned using contrastive learning is indeed on par with that of models fine-tuned with multi-stage approaches. Code is available for reproduction at https://github.com/fpezzuti/multistage-finetuning.
CodeIF-Bench: Evaluating Instruction-Following Capabilities of Large Language Models in Interactive Code Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2025
Year: 2025

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated exceptional performance in code generation tasks and have become indispensable programming assistants for developers. However, existing code generation benchmarks primarily assess the functional correctness of code generated by LLMs in single-turn interactions. They offer limited insight into LLMs' abilities to generate code that strictly follows users' instructions in multi-turn interaction scenarios. In this paper, we introduce CodeIF-Bench, a benchmark for evaluating the instruction-following capabilities of LLMs in interactive code generation. Specifically, CodeIF-Bench incorporates nine types of verifiable instructions aligned with the real-world software development requirements, which can be independently and objectively validated through specified test cases, facilitating the evaluation of instruction-following capability in multi-turn interactions. In both Static Conversation and Dynamic Conversation settings, we evaluate the performance of 6 state-of-the-art LLMs and summarize the important factors, additional repository context and gradually increasing interaction history influencing the instruction-following ability of LLMs in multi-turn interactions. Furthermore, we identify the potential direction for improvement: context management. The code and data are available at \href{https://github.com/zhu-zhu-ding/CodeIF-Bench}{https://github.com/zhu-zhu-ding/CodeIF-Bench}.