pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Multi-modal Multi-platform Person Re-Identification: Benchmark and Method
Authors: Ruiyang Ha, Songyi Jiang, Bin Li, Bikang Pan, Yihang Zhu, Junjie Zhang, Xiatian Zhu, Shaogang Gong, Jingya Wang
Date: 2025-03-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Person Re-Identification

Conventional person re-identification (ReID) research is often limited to single-modality sensor data from static cameras, which fails to address the complexities of real-world scenarios where multi-modal signals are increasingly prevalent. For instance, consider an urban ReID system integrating stationary RGB cameras, nighttime infrared sensors, and UAVs equipped with dynamic tracking capabilities. Such systems face significant challenges due to variations in camera perspectives, lighting conditions, and sensor modalities, hindering effective person ReID. To address these challenges, we introduce the MP-ReID benchmark, a novel dataset designed specifically for multi-modality and multi-platform ReID. This benchmark uniquely compiles data from 1,930 identities across diverse modalities, including RGB, infrared, and thermal imaging, captured by both UAVs and ground-based cameras in indoor and outdoor environments. Building on this benchmark, we introduce Uni-Prompt ReID, a framework with specific-designed prompts, tailored for cross-modality and cross-platform scenarios. Our method consistently outperforms state-of-the-art approaches, establishing a robust foundation for future research in complex and dynamic ReID environments. Our dataset are available at:https://mp-reid.github.io/.
CoRLD: Contrastive Representation Learning Of Deformable Shapes In Images
Authors: Tonmoy Hossain, Miaomiao Zhang
Date: 2025-03-21 00:00:00
Tasks: Computed Tomography (CT), image-classification, Image Classification, Representation Learning

Deformable shape representations, parameterized by deformations relative to a given template, have proven effective for improved image analysis tasks. However, their broader applicability is hindered by two major challenges. First, existing methods mainly rely on a known template during testing, which is impractical and limits flexibility. Second, they often struggle to capture fine-grained, voxel-level distinctions between similar shapes (e.g., anatomical variations among healthy individuals, those with mild cognitive impairment, and diseased states). To address these limitations, we propose a novel framework - Contrastive Representation Learning of Deformable shapes (CoRLD) in learned deformation spaces and demonstrate its effectiveness in the context of image classification. Our CoRLD leverages a class-aware contrastive supervised learning objective in latent deformation spaces, promoting proximity among representations of similar classes while ensuring separation of dissimilar groups. In contrast to previous deep learning networks that require a reference image as input to predict deformation changes, our approach eliminates this dependency. Instead, template images are utilized solely as ground truth in the loss function during the training process, making our model more flexible and generalizable to a wide range of medical applications. We validate CoRLD on diverse datasets, including real brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) and adrenal shapes derived from computed tomography (CT) scans. Experimental results show that our model effectively extracts deformable shape features, which can be easily integrated with existing classifiers to substantially boost the classification accuracy. Our code is available at GitHub.
Training Multi-Layer Binary Neural Networks With Local Binary Error Signals
Authors: Luca Colombo, Fabrizio Pittorino, Manuel Roveri
Date: 2024-11-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Multi-class Classification

Binary Neural Networks (BNNs) significantly reduce computational complexity and memory usage in machine and deep learning by representing weights and activations with just one bit. However, most existing training algorithms for BNNs rely on quantization-aware floating-point Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), limiting the full exploitation of binary operations to the inference phase only. In this work, we propose, for the first time, a fully binary and gradient-free training algorithm for multi-layer BNNs, eliminating the need for back-propagated floating-point gradients. Specifically, the proposed algorithm relies on local binary error signals and binary weight updates, employing integer-valued hidden weights that serve as a synaptic metaplasticity mechanism, thereby enhancing its neurobiological plausibility. The fully binary and gradient-free algorithm introduced in this paper enables the training of binary multi-layer perceptrons with binary inputs, weights, and activations, by using exclusively XNOR, Popcount, and increment/decrement operations. Experimental results on multi-class classification benchmarks show test accuracy improvements of up to +35.47% over the only existing fully binary single-layer state-of-the-art solution. Compared to full-precision SGD, our solution improves test accuracy by up to +41.31% under the same total memory demand$\unicode{x2013}$including the model, activations, and input dataset$\unicode{x2013}$while also reducing computational cost by two orders of magnitude in terms of the total number of equivalent Boolean gates. The proposed algorithm is made available to the scientific community as a public repository.
OmniScience: A Domain-Specialized LLM for Scientific Reasoning and Discovery
Authors: Vignesh Prabhakar, Md Amirul Islam, Adam Atanas, Yao-Ting Wang, Joah Han, Aastha Jhunjhunwala, Rucha Apte, Robert Clark, Kang Xu, Zihan Wang, Kai Liu
Date: 2025-03-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Knowledge Distillation

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable potential in advancing scientific knowledge and addressing complex challenges. In this work, we introduce OmniScience, a specialized large reasoning model for general science, developed through three key components: (1) domain adaptive pretraining on a carefully curated corpus of scientific literature, (2) instruction tuning on a specialized dataset to guide the model in following domain-specific tasks, and (3) reasoning-based knowledge distillation through fine-tuning to significantly enhance its ability to generate contextually relevant and logically sound responses. We demonstrate the versatility of OmniScience by developing a battery agent that efficiently ranks molecules as potential electrolyte solvents or additives. Comprehensive evaluations reveal that OmniScience is competitive with state-of-the-art large reasoning models on the GPQA Diamond and domain-specific battery benchmarks, while outperforming all public reasoning and non-reasoning models with similar parameter counts. We further demonstrate via ablation experiments that domain adaptive pretraining and reasoning-based knowledge distillation are critical to attain our performance levels, across benchmarks.
A Modular Dataset to Demonstrate LLM Abstraction Capability
Authors: Adam Atanas, Kai Liu
Date: 2025-03-22 00:00:00

Large language models (LLMs) exhibit impressive capabilities but struggle with reasoning errors due to hallucinations and flawed logic. To investigate their internal representations of reasoning, we introduce ArrangementPuzzle, a novel puzzle dataset with structured solutions and automated stepwise correctness verification. We trained a classifier model on LLM activations on this dataset and found that it achieved over 80% accuracy in predicting reasoning correctness, implying that LLMs internally distinguish between correct and incorrect reasoning steps, with the strongest representations in middle-late Transformer layers. Further analysis reveals that LLMs encode abstract reasoning concepts within the middle activation layers of the transformer architecture, distinguishing logical from semantic equivalence. These findings provide insights into LLM reasoning mechanisms and contribute to improving AI reliability and interpretability, thereby offering the possibility to manipulate and refine LLM reasoning.
Intelligence Sequencing and the Path-Dependence of Intelligence Evolution: AGI-First vs. DCI-First as Irreversible Attractors
Authors: Andy E. Williams
Date: 2025-03-22 00:00:00

The trajectory of intelligence evolution is often framed around the emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and its alignment with human values. This paper challenges that framing by introducing the concept of intelligence sequencing: the idea that the order in which AGI and decentralized collective intelligence (DCI) emerge determines the long-term attractor basin of intelligence. Using insights from dynamical systems, evolutionary game theory, and network models, it argues that intelligence follows a path-dependent, irreversible trajectory. Once development enters a centralized (AGI-first) or decentralized (DCI-first) regime, transitions become structurally infeasible due to feedback loops and resource lock-in. Intelligence attractors are modeled in functional state space as the co-navigation of conceptual and adaptive fitness spaces. Early-phase structuring constrains later dynamics, much like renormalization in physics. This has major implications for AI safety: traditional alignment assumes AGI will emerge and must be controlled after the fact, but this paper argues that intelligence sequencing is more foundational. If AGI-first architectures dominate before DCI reaches critical mass, hierarchical monopolization and existential risk become locked in. If DCI-first emerges, intelligence stabilizes around decentralized cooperative equilibrium. The paper further explores whether intelligence structurally biases itself toward an attractor based on its self-modeling method -- externally imposed axioms (favoring AGI) vs. recursive internal visualization (favoring DCI). Finally, it proposes methods to test this theory via simulations, historical lock-in case studies, and intelligence network analysis. The findings suggest that intelligence sequencing is a civilizational tipping point: determining whether the future is shaped by unbounded competition or unbounded cooperation.
A Survey on Mathematical Reasoning and Optimization with Large Language Models
Authors: Ali Forootani
Date: 2025-03-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Automated Theorem Proving, Heuristic Search, Mathematical Problem-Solving, Mathematical Reasoning, Prompt Engineering, Survey

Mathematical reasoning and optimization are fundamental to artificial intelligence and computational problem-solving. Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly improved AI-driven mathematical reasoning, theorem proving, and optimization techniques. This survey explores the evolution of mathematical problem-solving in AI, from early statistical learning approaches to modern deep learning and transformer-based methodologies. We review the capabilities of pretrained language models and LLMs in performing arithmetic operations, complex reasoning, theorem proving, and structured symbolic computation. A key focus is on how LLMs integrate with optimization and control frameworks, including mixed-integer programming, linear quadratic control, and multi-agent optimization strategies. We examine how LLMs assist in problem formulation, constraint generation, and heuristic search, bridging theoretical reasoning with practical applications. We also discuss enhancement techniques such as Chain-of-Thought reasoning, instruction tuning, and tool-augmented methods that improve LLM's problem-solving performance. Despite their progress, LLMs face challenges in numerical precision, logical consistency, and proof verification. Emerging trends such as hybrid neural-symbolic reasoning, structured prompt engineering, and multi-step self-correction aim to overcome these limitations. Future research should focus on interpretability, integration with domain-specific solvers, and improving the robustness of AI-driven decision-making. This survey offers a comprehensive review of the current landscape and future directions of mathematical reasoning and optimization with LLMs, with applications across engineering, finance, and scientific research.
MEPNet: Medical Entity-balanced Prompting Network for Brain CT Report Generation
Authors: Xiaodan Zhang, Yanzhao Shi, Junzhong Ji, Chengxin Zheng, Liangqiong Qu
Date: 2025-03-22 00:00:00
Tasks: Anatomy, Large Language Model, Text Generation

The automatic generation of brain CT reports has gained widespread attention, given its potential to assist radiologists in diagnosing cranial diseases. However, brain CT scans involve extensive medical entities, such as diverse anatomy regions and lesions, exhibiting highly inconsistent spatial patterns in 3D volumetric space. This leads to biased learning of medical entities in existing methods, resulting in repetitiveness and inaccuracy in generated reports. To this end, we propose a Medical Entity-balanced Prompting Network (MEPNet), which harnesses the large language model (LLM) to fairly interpret various entities for accurate brain CT report generation. By introducing the visual embedding and the learning status of medical entities as enriched clues, our method prompts the LLM to balance the learning of diverse entities, thereby enhancing reports with comprehensive findings. First, to extract visual embedding of entities, we propose Knowledge-driven Joint Attention to explore and distill entity patterns using both explicit and implicit medical knowledge. Then, a Learning Status Scorer is designed to evaluate the learning of entity visual embeddings, resulting in unique learning status for individual entities. Finally, these entity visual embeddings and status are elaborately integrated into multi-modal prompts, to guide the text generation of LLM. This process allows LLM to self-adapt the learning process for biased-fitted entities, thereby covering detailed findings in generated reports. We conduct experiments on two brain CT report generation benchmarks, showing the effectiveness in clinical accuracy and text coherence.
OvercookedV2: Rethinking Overcooked for Zero-Shot Coordination
Authors: Tobias Gessler, Tin Dizdarevic, Ani Calinescu, Benjamin Ellis, Andrei Lupu, Jakob Nicolaus Foerster
Date: 2025-03-22 00:00:00

AI agents hold the potential to transform everyday life by helping humans achieve their goals. To do this successfully, agents need to be able to coordinate with novel partners without prior interaction, a setting known as zero-shot coordination (ZSC). Overcooked has become one of the most popular benchmarks for evaluating coordination capabilities of AI agents and learning algorithms. In this work, we investigate the origins of ZSC challenges in Overcooked. We introduce a state augmentation mechanism which mixes states that might be encountered when paired with unknown partners into the training distribution, reducing the out-of-distribution challenge associated with ZSC. We show that independently trained agents under this algorithm coordinate successfully in Overcooked. Our results suggest that ZSC failure can largely be attributed to poor state coverage under self-play rather than more sophisticated coordination challenges. The Overcooked environment is therefore not suitable as a ZSC benchmark. To address these shortcomings, we introduce OvercookedV2, a new version of the benchmark, which includes asymmetric information and stochasticity, facilitating the creation of interesting ZSC scenarios. To validate OvercookedV2, we conduct experiments demonstrating that mere exhaustive state coverage is insufficient to coordinate well. Finally, we use OvercookedV2 to build a new range of coordination challenges, including ones that require test time protocol formation, and we demonstrate the need for new coordination algorithms that can adapt online. We hope that OvercookedV2 will help benchmark the next generation of ZSC algorithms and advance collaboration between AI agents and humans.
Metacognition in Content-Centric Computational Cognitive C4 Modeling
Authors: Sergei Nirenburg, Marjorie McShane, Sanjay Oruganti
Date: 2025-03-22 00:00:00

For AI agents to emulate human behavior, they must be able to perceive, meaningfully interpret, store, and use large amounts of information about the world, themselves, and other agents. Metacognition is a necessary component of all of these processes. In this paper, we briefly a) introduce content-centric computational cognitive (C4) modeling for next-generation AI agents; b) review the long history of developing C4 agents at RPI's LEIA (Language-Endowed Intelligent Agents) Lab; c) discuss our current work on extending LEIAs' cognitive capabilities to cognitive robotic applications developed using a neuro symbolic processing model; and d) sketch plans for future developments in this paradigm that aim to overcome underappreciated limitations of currently popular, LLM-driven methods in AI.
Trade-offs in Large Reasoning Models: An Empirical Analysis of Deliberative and Adaptive Reasoning over Foundational Capabilities
Authors: Weixiang Zhao, Xingyu Sui, Jiahe Guo, Yulin Hu, Yang Deng, Yanyan Zhao, Bing Qin, Wanxiang Che, Tat-Seng Chua, Ting Liu
Date: 2025-03-23 00:00:00

Recent advancements in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), such as OpenAI's o1/o3 and DeepSeek-R1, have demonstrated remarkable performance in specialized reasoning tasks through human-like deliberative thinking and long chain-of-thought reasoning. However, our systematic evaluation across various model families (DeepSeek, Qwen, and LLaMA) and scales (7B to 671B) reveals that acquiring these deliberative reasoning capabilities significantly reduces the foundational capabilities of LRMs, including notable declines in helpfulness and harmlessness, alongside substantially increased inference costs. Importantly, we demonstrate that adaptive reasoning -- employing modes like Zero-Thinking, Less-Thinking, and Summary-Thinking -- can effectively alleviate these drawbacks. Our empirical insights underline the critical need for developing more versatile LRMs capable of dynamically allocating inference-time compute according to specific task characteristics.
Lost in Cultural Translation: Do LLMs Struggle with Math Across Cultural Contexts?
Authors: Aabid Karim, Abdul Karim, Bhoomika Lohana, Matt Keon, Jaswinder Singh, Abdul Sattar
Date: 2025-03-23 00:00:00
Tasks: GSM8K, Math, Mathematical Reasoning

Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly advanced various fields, particularly coding, mathematical reasoning, and logical problem solving. However, a critical question remains: Do these mathematical reasoning abilities persist when LLMs are presented with culturally adapted math problems? Specifically, how do LLMs perform when faced with math problems embedded in cultural contexts that have no significant representation in main stream web-scale AI training data? To explore this, we generated six synthetic cultural datasets from GSM8K, a widely used benchmark for assessing LLMs' mathematical reasoning skills. While preserving the mathematical logic and numerical values of the original GSM8K test set, we modify cultural elements such as personal names, food items, place names, etc. These culturally adapted datasets provide a more reliable framework for evaluating LLMs' mathematical reasoning under shifting cultural contexts. Our findings reveal that LLMs struggle with math problems when cultural references change, even though the underlying mathematical structure remains constant. Smaller models exhibit greater performance drops compared to larger models. Interestingly, our results also suggest that cultural familiarity can enhance mathematical reasoning. Even models with no explicit mathematical training but exposure to relevant cultural contexts sometimes outperform larger, mathematically proficient models on culturally embedded math problems. This study highlights the impact of cultural context on the mathematical reasoning abilities of LLMs, underscoring the need for more diverse and representative training data to improve robustness in real-world applications. The benchmark data sets and script for reproducing the results are available at https://github.com/akarim23131/Lost_in_Cultural_Translation
AgentRxiv: Towards Collaborative Autonomous Research
Authors: Samuel Schmidgall, Michael Moor
Date: 2025-03-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Math, scientific discovery

Progress in scientific discovery is rarely the result of a single "Eureka" moment, but is rather the product of hundreds of scientists incrementally working together toward a common goal. While existing agent workflows are capable of producing research autonomously, they do so in isolation, without the ability to continuously improve upon prior research results. To address these challenges, we introduce AgentRxiv-a framework that lets LLM agent laboratories upload and retrieve reports from a shared preprint server in order to collaborate, share insights, and iteratively build on each other's research. We task agent laboratories to develop new reasoning and prompting techniques and find that agents with access to their prior research achieve higher performance improvements compared to agents operating in isolation (11.4% relative improvement over baseline on MATH-500). We find that the best performing strategy generalizes to benchmarks in other domains (improving on average by 3.3%). Multiple agent laboratories sharing research through AgentRxiv are able to work together towards a common goal, progressing more rapidly than isolated laboratories, achieving higher overall accuracy (13.7% relative improvement over baseline on MATH-500). These findings suggest that autonomous agents may play a role in designing future AI systems alongside humans. We hope that AgentRxiv allows agents to collaborate toward research goals and enables researchers to accelerate discovery.
Exploring Energy Landscapes for Minimal Counterfactual Explanations: Applications in Cybersecurity and Beyond
Authors: Spyridon Evangelatos, Eleni Veroni, Vasilis Efthymiou, Christos Nikolopoulos, Georgios Th. Papadopoulos, Panagiotis Sarigiannidis
Date: 2025-03-23 00:00:00
Tasks: counterfactual, Explainable artificial intelligence, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), Fairness

Counterfactual explanations have emerged as a prominent method in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), providing intuitive and actionable insights into Machine Learning model decisions. In contrast to other traditional feature attribution methods that assess the importance of input variables, counterfactual explanations focus on identifying the minimal changes required to alter a model's prediction, offering a ``what-if'' analysis that is close to human reasoning. In the context of XAI, counterfactuals enhance transparency, trustworthiness and fairness, offering explanations that are not just interpretable but directly applicable in the decision-making processes. In this paper, we present a novel framework that integrates perturbation theory and statistical mechanics to generate minimal counterfactual explanations in explainable AI. We employ a local Taylor expansion of a Machine Learning model's predictive function and reformulate the counterfactual search as an energy minimization problem over a complex landscape. In sequence, we model the probability of candidate perturbations leveraging the Boltzmann distribution and use simulated annealing for iterative refinement. Our approach systematically identifies the smallest modifications required to change a model's prediction while maintaining plausibility. Experimental results on benchmark datasets for cybersecurity in Internet of Things environments, demonstrate that our method provides actionable, interpretable counterfactuals and offers deeper insights into model sensitivity and decision boundaries in high-dimensional spaces.