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Social Aspects · Accountability, Transparency, and Interpretability

Alaa Anani, Tobias Lorenz, Bernt Schiele, Mario Fritz, Jonas Fischer

Understanding *how* neural networks arrive at their predictions is essential for debugging, auditing, and deployment. Mechanistic interpretability pursues this goal by identifying *circuits*—minimal subnetworks responsible for specific behaviors. However, existing circuit discovery methods are brittle: circuits depend strongly on the chosen concept dataset and often fail to transfer out-of-distribution, raising doubts whether they capture concept or dataset-specific artifacts. We introduce *Certified Circuits*, which provide provable stability guarantees for circuit discovery. Our framework wraps any black-box discovery algorithm with randomized data subsampling to certify that circuit component inclusion decisions are invariant to bounded edit-distance perturbations of the concept dataset. Unstable neurons are abstained from, yielding circuits that are more compact and more accurate. On ImageNet and OOD datasets, certified circuits achieve up to 91\% higher accuracy while using 45\% fewer neurons, and remain reliable where baselines degrade. *Certified Circuits* puts circuit discovery on formal ground by producing mechanistic explanations that are provably stable and better aligned with the target concept. Code released upon publication.

General Machine Learning · Causality

Valentyn Melnychuk, Vahid Balazadeh, Stefan Feuerriegel, Rahul G. Krishnan

Foundation models based on prior-data fitted networks (PFNs) have shown strong empirical performance in causal inference by framing it as an in-context learning problem. However, it is unclear whether PFN-based causal estimators provide uncertainty quantification that is consistent with classical frequentist estimators. In this work, we address this gap by analyzing the frequentist consistency of PFN-based estimators for the average treatment effect (ATE). (1) We show that existing PFNs, when interpreted as Bayesian ATE estimators, can exhibit prior-induced confounding bias: the prior is not asymptotically overwritten by data, which, in turn, prevents frequentist consistency. (2) As a remedy, we suggest employing a calibration procedure based on a one-step posterior correction (OSPC). We show that the OSPC helps to restore frequentist consistency and can yield a semi-parametric Bernstein–von Mises theorem for calibrated PFNs (i.e., both the calibrated PFNs and the classical semi-parametric efficient estimators converge with growing data size). (3) Finally, we implement OSPC through tailoring martingale posteriors on top of the PFNs. In this way, we are able to recover nuisance-function posterior distributions from PFNs, required by the OSPC. In multiple (semi-)synthetic experiments, PFNs calibrated with our martingale posterior OSPC produce ATE uncertainty that (i) asymptotically matches frequentist uncertainty and (ii) is often best calibrated in finite samples among other Bayesian ATE estimators.

Probabilistic Methods · Everything Else

Sacha Braun, David Holzmüller, Michael Jordan, Francis Bach

Evaluating conditional coverage remains one of the most persistent challenges in assessing the reliability of predictive systems. Although conformal methods can give guarantees on marginal coverage, no method can guarantee to produce sets with correct conditional coverage, leaving practitioners without a clear way to interpret local deviations. To overcome sample-inefficiency and overfitting issues of existing metrics, we cast conditional coverage estimation as a classification problem. Conditional coverage is violated if and only if any classifier can achieve lower risk than the target coverage. Through the choice of a (proper) loss function, the resulting risk difference gives a conservative estimate of natural miscoverage measures such as L1 and L2 distance, and can even separate the effects of over- and under-coverage, as well as handle non-constant target coverages. We call the resulting family of metrics excess risk of the target coverage (ERT). We show experimentally that the use of modern classifiers provides much higher statistical power than simple classifiers underlying established metrics like CovGap. Additionally, we use our metric to benchmark different conformal prediction methods. Finally, we release an open-source package for ERT as well as previous conditional coverage metrics. Together, these contributions provide a new lens for understanding, diagnosing, and improving the conditional reliability of predictive systems.

Applications · Chemistry, Physics, and Earth Sciences

Guoze Sun, Tianya Miao, Haoyang Huang, Huaguan Chen, Han Wan, Rui Zhang, Hao Sun

Geometry is central to PDE-governed systems, motivating shape optimization and inversion. Classical pipelines conduct costly forward simulation with geometry processing, requiring substantial expert effort. Neural surrogates accelerate forward analysis but do not close the loop because gradients from objectives to geometry are often unavailable. Existing differentiable methods either rely on restrictive parameterizations or unstable latent optimization driven by scalar objectives, limiting interpretability and part-wise control. To address these challenges, we propose Geometry-Aware Neural Optimizer (GANO), an end-to-end differentiable framework that unifies geometry representation, field-level prediction, and automated optimization/inversion in a single latent-space loop. GANO encodes shapes with an auto-decoder and stabilizes latent updates via a denoising mechanism, and a geometry-injected surrogate provides a reliable gradient pathway for geometry updates. Moreover, GANO supports part-wise control through null-space projection and uses remeshing-free projection to accelerate geometry processing. We further prove that denoising induces an implicit Jacobian regularization that reduces decoder sensitivity, yielding controlled deformations. Experiments on three benchmarks spanning 2D Helmholtz, 2D airfoil, and 3D vehicles show state-of-the-art accuracy and stable, controllable updates, achieving up to $+55.9\%$ lift-to-drag improvement for airfoils and $\sim 7\%$ drag reduction for vehicles.

Applications · Health / Medicine

Ziyang Liu, Ruiqiang Xiao, Chang Huang, KIEREN YU, Siyuan He, Kaishun WU

Continuous ECG monitoring is clinically valuable, but scaling it beyond electrodes to comfortable long-term use motivates contactless mmWave sensing. In practice, mmWave-to-ECG reconstruction is severely constrained by the scarcity of high-quality synchronized recordings and poor cross-subject generalization. To overcome these bottlenecks, we propose \textbf{Cardio-mmFlow}, a Gaussian-prior-free physics-informed flow matching framework that synthesizes realistic mmWave radar signals from abundant clinical ECG corpora. It learns a direct transport trajectory between the latent manifolds of ECG and radar. To capture subject-dependent propagation differences, we incorporate a simplified mass--spring--damper inspired physical prior and inject it into the flow dynamics via feature-wise linear modulation for personalization. Extensive experiments show that our system have generate high fidelity radar data in both signal and latent domains. It significantly improve zero-shot downstream mmWave$\rightarrow$ECG task, and enable Atrial Fibrillation classification with synthetic data. Further analysis evaluate the model interpretability.

Deep Learning · Large Language Models

Naïm Es-sebbani, Esteban Marquer, Yakoub Salhi, Zied Bouraoui

Logic provides a controlled testbed for evaluating LLM-based reasoners, yet standard SAT-style benchmarks often conflate surface difficulty (length, wording, clause order) with the structural phenomena that actually determine satisfiability. We introduce a diagnostic benchmark for \emph{2-SAT} built from parameterized families of structured 2--CNF formulas, where satisfiability is characterized by the implication graph and can be tuned along interpretable axes. Our generators isolate distinct competencies and failure modes: (i) contradiction-cycle UNSAT cores with controllable size and imbalance, (ii) SAT instances with a prescribed fraction of free variables to control solution multiplicity, (iii) planted backbones that modulate propagation, (iv) late bridge clauses that couple otherwise monotone regions to probe sensitivity to ordering and revision, and (v) symmetry/duplication variants that test abstraction under renaming and redundant structure. We evaluate LLM-based reasoners on decision accuracy and assignment validity, and quantify robustness under semantics-preserving perturbations such as clause reordering, filler clauses, and variable renaming. Across models, we observe sharp performance transitions under targeted structural interventions even when surface statistics are held fixed, revealing brittleness regimes that are invisible to aggregate SAT accuracy.

Social Aspects · Privacy

Huikang Liu, Aras Selvi, Wolfram Wiesemann

We design a class of additive noise mechanisms that satisfy $(\varepsilon, \delta)$-differential privacy (DP) for scalar, real-valued query functions with known sensitivities, with a particular focus on moderate and low-privacy regimes. These mechanisms, which we call *mixture mechanisms*, are constructed by mixing multiple Gaussian distributions that share the same variance but differ in their means and mixture weights. The resulting distributions can be interpreted as convex combinations of a zero-mean Gaussian (as used in the analytic Gaussian mechanism) and additional Gaussians whose means depend on the sensitivity of the query function. We derive tight conditions on the variances required for $(\varepsilon, \delta)$-DP and provide efficient algorithms to compute them. Compared to the analytic Gaussian mechanism, our mechanisms yield substantially lower expected noise amplitudes ($l_1$-loss) and variances ($l_2$-loss for zero-mean distributions). In the low-privacy regime that motivates our design, our mechanisms approach optimality, mitigating nearly all of the optimality gap of the analytic Gaussian mechanism.

Social Aspects · Accountability, Transparency, and Interpretability

Jongwook Han, Jongwon Lim, Injin Kong, Yohan Jo

Large language models can express values in two main ways: (1) $\textit{intrinsic}$ expression, reflecting the model's inherent values learned during training, and (2) $\textit{prompted}$ expression, elicited by explicit prompts. Given their widespread use in value alignment, it is paramount to clearly understand their underlying mechanisms, particularly whether they mostly overlap (as one might expect) or rely on distinct mechanisms, but this remains largely understudied. We analyze this at the mechanistic level using two approaches: (1) $\textit{value vectors}$, feature directions representing value mechanisms extracted from the residual stream, and (2) $\textit{value neurons}$, MLP neurons that contribute to value vectors. We demonstrate that intrinsic and prompted value mechanisms partly share common components crucial for inducing value expression, generalizing across languages and reconstructing theoretical inter-value correlations in the model's internal representations. Yet, as these mechanisms also possess unique elements that fulfill distinct roles, they lead to different degrees of response diversity ($\textit{intrinsic}$ $>$ $\textit{prompted}$) and value steerability ($\textit{prompted}$ $>$ $\textit{intrinsic}$). In particular, components unique to the intrinsic mechanism promote lexical diversity in responses, whereas those specific to the prompted mechanism strengthen instruction following, taking effect even in distant tasks like jailbreaking.

Social Aspects · Accountability, Transparency, and Interpretability

Jiadong Lou, Wenxin Rong, Li Chen, Xing Gao, Rui Zhang, Xu Yuan

Concerns over dataset misuse in deep learning have highlighted the need for effective auditing. Unlike existing intrusive methods that require dataset modifications, which risk model performance and security, we present DataGuard, a non-intrusive framework for quantitative dataset auditing. Specifically, DataGuard integrates three key components: 1) a differential comparison between the target dataset and auxiliary non-training datasets, 2) an information-forensic analysis establishing formal inequalities to distinguish training data; and 3) a multivariate statistical test that translates these discrepancies into rigorous auditing scores. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DataGuard can detect both full and partial dataset usage without false positives while remaining robust under diverse training scenarios, offering a principled, information-theoretic solution for transparent AI development.

Deep Learning · Large Language Models

Yoonah Park, Haesung Pyun, Yohan Jo

While large language models (LLMs) perform strongly on diverse tasks, their trustworthiness is limited by erratic behavior that is unfaithful to their internal knowledge. In particular, LLMs often fail on multiple-choice questions (MCQs) even if they encode correct answers in their hidden representations, revealing a misalignment between internal knowledge and output behavior. We investigate and mitigate this knowledge-prediction gap on MCQs through a three-step analysis of hidden representations. First, we quantify the prevalence and magnitude of the gap across models and datasets. Second, we provide a geometric interpretation by identifying distinct knowledge and prediction subspaces in the residual stream. Third, we introduce KAPPA, a lightweight inference-time intervention that aligns the two subspaces within the residual stream to reduce the knowledge-prediction gap. Our results provide a geometric and interpretable explanation of the knowledge-prediction gap in LLMs. Furthermore, KAPPA effectively reduces the gap across diverse MCQ benchmarks and models, and generalizes to free-form settings.

Deep Learning · Large Language Models

G M Shahariar, Erfan Shayegani, Ali Nazari, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh

Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) solve complex tasks by generating long Chain-of-Thought (CoT) sequences; however, the emergent dynamics governing reasoning trajectories are not well understood and can lead to inconsistencies and reasoning pathologies. In this work, we propose to approximate LRM's emerging hierarchical reasoning dynamics as a trajectory within a Finite State Machine (FSM) transitioning among six abstract cognitive states. We demonstrate that these states and transitions can be captured in the latent state of the model. We believe that this representation can have different applications in the interpretability and optimization of LRM models. For example, by analyzing the topology of these transitions, we identify statistical shifts in reasoning strategies that help identify effective reasoning chains from those that fail. To illustrate these potential advantages, we propose $Q$-Value guided steering, a training-free inference-time control method that treats reasoning as a planning problem. We estimate the long-horizon utility of state transitions and apply sparse, orthogonal activation steering at sentence boundaries to align the CoT generation with optimal reasoning policies. Experiments across four benchmarks (AIME25, MATH-500, GSM8k, and GPQA Diamond) using three state-of-the-art open reasoning models demonstrate that $Q$-Value steering policy achieves significant performance gains with "surgical'' efficiency, often requiring $25\times$ fewer interventions than greedy and weighted baselines, which suggests that reasoning can be effectively controlled by guiding high-level cognitive dynamics rather than micro-managing token generation.

Deep Learning · Attention Mechanisms

Hyunmin Cho, Woo Kyoung Han, Kyong Hwan Jin

We characterize the pre-softmax attention matrix $\mathbf{QK^\top}$ in transformers as an associative memory matrix encoding pairwise associations between input features. By decomposing this matrix into its symmetric and skew-symmetric parts, we interpret the symmetric component as governing the structure of the *energy landscape*, and the skew-symmetric component as driving *circulation* on that landscape. Leveraging the energy formulation induced by the symmetric component, we derive Hopfield-style stability measures that quantify the stability of retrieved features. Empirically, we observe meaningful correlations between Hopfield-style stability measures and the fidelity$-$diversity trade-offs in generation. Finally, we propose a controllable knob to modulate this trade-off by directly modifying the circulation of the underlying dynamics.

Chang Yu, Yuxuan Luo, Yixuan Du, Yuqing Zhou, Siyuan Li, Jingbo Zhou, jiawei jiang, Zhen Lei, Stan Z Li

Modeling complex dynamics from observational data is fundamental to scientific discovery and artificial intelligence. However, existing approaches ranging from Neural ODEs to diffusion models are often plagued by the entanglement of static state representations and instantaneous motion, leading to accumulated errors and off-manifold hallucinations where predicted trajectories violate intrinsic geometric constraints. To address this, we propose Geometric Flow Grounding, a unified framework that enforces dynamic evolution strictly along the tangent bundle of the learned data manifold via a differentiable Neural Tangent Projection Layer. By geometrically decoupling state representation from tangential dynamics, our method generalizes across diverse data regimes. In the context of scientific discovery, we demonstrate that the projection layer eliminates numerical aliasing in sparse dynamical systems and recovers interpretable gene regulatory motifs from single-cell data by disentangling states from developmental velocities. Bridging to trustworthy AI, we further repurpose the geometric projection residual as a zero-shot metric for deepfake video detection, identifying generative inconsistencies against the implicit flow of pre-trained world models. Our results establish manifold-constrained projection as a universal operator for both discovering natural laws and verifying synthetic content.

Applications · Chemistry, Physics, and Earth Sciences

Sung Moon Ko, Jaewan Lee, Sumin Lee, Soorin Yim, Sehui Han

Geometrical interpretations of deep learning models offer insightful perspectives into their underlying mathematical structures. In this work, we introduce a novel approach that leverages differential geometry, particularly concepts from Riemannian geometry, to integrate multiple models into a unified transfer learning framework. By aligning the Ricci curvature of latent space of individual models, we construct an interrelated architecture, namely Geometric Embedding Alignment via cuRvature matching in transfer learning (GEAR), which ensures comprehensive geometric representation across datapoints. This framework enables the effective aggregation of knowledge from diverse sources, thereby improving performance on target tasks. We evaluate our model on 23 molecular task pairs and demonstrate significant performance gains over existing benchmark models—achieving improvements of at least 14.4% under random splits and 8.3% under scaffold splits.

Applications · Neuroscience, Cognitive Science

Wei Xiong, Jiangtong Li, Jie Li, Kun Zhu, Changjun Jiang

Electroencephalography foundation models (EEG-FMs) have advanced brain signal analysis, but the lack of standardized evaluation benchmarks impedes model comparison and scientific progress. Current evaluations rely on inconsistent protocols that render cross-model comparisons unreliable, while a lack of diagnostic analyses obscures the internal mechanisms driving transfer efficiency and scaling behaviors. To address this, we introduce **EEG-FM-Bench**, a unified system for the standardized evaluation of EEG-FMs. The benchmark integrates 14 datasets across 10 paradigms and incorporates diverse experimental settings, including multiple fine-tuning strategies, task organizations, and classifier configurations, supported by tools for gradient and representation analysis. Our experiments and analysis reveal several critical insights: (1) multi-task learning acts as a critical regularizer to mitigate overfitting in data-scarce EEG contexts; (2) pre-training efficiency is currently limited by gradient conflicts between reconstruction objectives and downstream tasks; (3) model scaling deviates from typical laws, as compact architectures with domain-specific inductive biases consistently outperform significantly larger models. This benchmark enables fair comparison and reproducible analysis, shifting the field from fragmented results to interpretable advances.

Social Aspects · Fairness

Jiwoo Han, Moulinath Banerjee, Yuekai Sun

When deploying a single predictor across multiple subpopulations, we propose a fundamentally different approach: interpreting group fairness as a bargaining problem among subpopulations. This game-theoretic perspective reveals that existing robust optimization methods such as minimizing worst-group loss or regret correspond to classical bargaining solutions and embody different fairness principles. We propose relative improvement, the ratio of actual risk reduction to potential reduction from a baseline predictor, which recovers the Kalai–Smorodinsky solution. Unlike absolute-scale methods that may not be comparable when groups have different potential predictability, relative improvement provides axiomatic justification including scale invariance and individual monotonicity. We establish finite-sample convergence guarantees under mild conditions.

Applications · Computer Vision

Binfeng Wang, Di Wang, Haonan Guo, Ying Fu, Jing Zhang

Unified hyperspectral image (HSI) restoration aims to recover diverse degradations within a single model. However, current methods often rely on impractical explicit priors or opaque black-box representations that overfit to training distributions, hampering generalization to unseen scenarios. To bridge this gap, we propose Degradation-Aware Metric Prompting (DAMP), a novel framework that characterizes multi-dimensional degradations through interpretable spatial-spectral metrics. These metrics serve as Degradation Prompts (DP), enabling the model to capture shared characteristics across tasks and adapt to unknown corruptions. Central to our framework is the Degradation-Adaptive Mixture-of-Experts (DAMoE), where Spatial-Spectral Adaptive Modules (SSAMs) serve as experts that utilize learnable fusion coefficients to specialize in distinct degradation degrees. By using DP as a gating router, DAMoE dynamically activates specialized experts tailored to the specific degradation profile. Extensive experiments on natural and remote sensing HSI datasets demonstrate that DAMP achieves state-of-the-art performance and exhibits exceptional zero-shot generalization on unseen restoration tasks. The source code will be released.

Reinforcement Learning · Inverse

Raphaël Baur, Yannick Metz, Maria Gkoulta, Mennatallah El-Assady, Giorgia Ramponi, Thomas Kleine Buening

Reward learning typically relies on a single feedback type or combines multiple feedback types using manually weighted loss terms. Currently, it remains unclear how to jointly learn reward functions from heterogeneous feedback types such as demonstrations, comparisons, ratings, rankings, and stops that provide qualitatively different signals. We address this challenge by formulating reward learning from multiple feedback types as Bayesian inference over a shared latent reward function, where each feedback type contributes information through an explicit likelihood. We introduce a scalable amortized variational inference approach that learns a shared reward encoder and feedback-specific likelihood decoders and is trained by optimizing a single evidence lower bound. Our approach avoids reducing feedback to a common intermediate representation and eliminates the need for manual loss balancing. Across discrete and continuous-control benchmarks, we show that jointly inferred reward posteriors outperform single-type baselines, exploit complementary information across feedback types, and yield policies that are more robust to environment perturbations. The inferred reward uncertainty further provides interpretable signals for analyzing model confidence and consistency across feedback types.

Deep Learning · Large Language Models

Fangru Lin, Valentin Hofmann, Xingchen Wan, Weixing Wang, Zifeng Ding, Anthony Cohn, Janet Pierrehumbert

Large language models (LLMs) are trained and tested extensively on symbolic representations such as code and graphs, yet real-world user tasks are often specified in natural language. To what extent can LLMs generalize across these representations? Here, we approach this question by studying isomorphic tasks involving procedures represented in code, graphs, and natural language (e.g., scheduling steps in planning). We find that training LLMs with popular post-training methods on graphs or code data alone does not reliably generalize to corresponding natural language tasks, while training solely on natural language can lead to inefficient performance gains. To address this gap, we propose a two-stage data curriculum that first trains on symbolic, then natural language data. The curriculum substantially improves model performance across model families and tasks. Remarkably, a 1.5B Qwen model trained by our method can closely match zero-shot GPT-4o in naturalistic planning. Finally, our analysis suggests that successful cross-representation generalization can be interpreted as a form of generative analogy, which our curriculum effectively encourages.

Wenbo Pan, Zhichao Liu, Xianlong Wang, Yu Haining, Xiaohua Jia

Token attribution methods provide intuitive explanations for language model outputs by identifying causally important input tokens. However, as modern LLMs increasingly rely on extended reasoning chains, existing schemes face two critical challenges: (1) efficiency bottleneck, where attributing a sequence of $|\mathbf{S}|$ tokens requires $\mathcal{O}(|\mathbf{S}|^2)$ operations, making long-context attribution prohibitively slow; and (2) faithfulness drop, where intermediate reasoning tokens absorb attribution mass, preventing importance from propagating back to the original input. To address these, we introduce **FlashTrace**, an efficient multi-token attribution method that employs span-wise aggregation to compute attribution over *multi-token targets in a single pass*, reducing complexity to $\mathcal{O}(|\mathbf{S}|)$. Moreover, we design a recursive attribution mechanism that traces importance through intermediate reasoning chains back to source inputs. Extensive experiments on long-context retrieval (RULER) and multi-step reasoning (MATH, MorehopQA) tasks demonstrate that FlashTrace achieves over 130× speedup over existing baselines while maintaining superior faithfulness. We further analyze the dynamics of recursive attribution, showing that even a single recursive hop substantially improves faithfulness by tracing importance through the reasoning chain.