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machine learning

3,367 papers

Diffusion models as plug-and-play priors

The possibility of inferring high-dimensional data inference in a model that consists of a prior and an auxiliary differentiable constraint given some additional information is considered, thereby allowing a range of potential applications in adapting models to new domains and tasks.

Alexandros Graikos, Esmeralda S. Whitammer, N. Jojic et al. · 316 citations · ⚡15

Trajectory Balance: Improved Credit Assignment in GFlowNets

It is proved that any global minimizer of the trajectory balance objective can define a policy that samples exactly from the target distribution, and empirically demonstrate the benefits of the trajectories balance objective for GFlowNet convergence, diversity of generated samples, and robustness to long action sequences and large action spaces.

Esmeralda S. Whitammer, Moksh Jain, Emmanuel Bengio et al. · 302 citations · ⚡60
#machine learning Preprint Aug 2026

On two proofs of $d^2$ mixing of weighted Dikin walks

We study the mixing time of weighted Dikin walks for sampling from exponential distributions on polytopes and truncated positive-semidefinite (PSD) cones. Our first result gives a general total-variation mixing bound under strong self-concordance, $\bar{\nu}$-symmetry, and mixed-trace regularity on the local metric. The key idea is to control the Metropolis--Hastings acceptance probability on a high-probability region rather than at every point. Applying this framework to the Lee--Sidford, Lewis-weight, and John metrics yields an $\widetilde O(d^2)$ mixing bound for sampling from polytopes, while applying it to a hybrid barrier yields an $\widetilde O(d^4)$ mixing bound for sampling from truncated PSD cones. Our second result establishes stronger $\chi^2$-divergence guarantees and pointwise acceptance control using a new fourth-order bootstrap condition. For a suitably scaled Lee--Sidford metric, this yields an $\widetilde O(d^2)$ mixing bound in $\chi^2$-divergence, improving on the previous $\widetilde O(d^{9/4})$ bound.

Yuansi Chen, Yunbum Kook · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Aug 2026

Learning between the peaks: sharp asymptotics for kernel ridge regression under power-law anisotropy

Together, the results clarify how the input geometry shapes the kernel features and fundamentally impacts its generalization properties and clarify how the input geometry shapes the kernel features and fundamentally impacts its generalization properties.

L. Rizzi, Arie Wortsman Zurich, Bruno Loureiro · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Aug 2026

Generalized Splines and Gaussian Processes

For finite-dimensional linear inverse problems where the variables are Gaussian, it is well-known that the minimum-mean-square error estimator takes the form of a regularized least-squares data fit. In this chapter, we show that this equivalence extends to a much broader infinite-dimensional setting where generalized splines take the role of linear regressors and generalized Gaussian processes on a nuclear space $S$ are the counterpart of Gaussian random vectors. The scope of this extension is of the same nature as the switch from the classic notion of function to that of a distribution, also known as a"generalized function."Our formalism involves a whitening/regularization operator $L: S\to S'$ whose continuous extension induces a native Hilbert space $H\subset S'$ that plays a central role in our characterization. The presentation is self-contained for the most part and remarkably general and powerful. It allows for the recovery of all known instances of such equivalences; in particular, the methods involving innovations and reproducing-kernel Hilbert spaces developed by Kailath and his students, and the mathematical correspondence between fractional splines and Mandelbrot's fractional Brownian motion (fractals), with the former being the optimal estimators of the latter. It also covers general Bayesian methods for the resolution of infinite-dimensional inverse problems.

Michael Unser · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Aug 2026

Sliding-window beats linear attention

This work shows that Sliding Window Attention (SWA) with sinks performs as well or better than post-trained Linear Attention models, and recommends switching to SWA instead of post-training linear models.

Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau, R. Sukthanker, Pashmina Cameron et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Aug 2026

Post-Training VLMs for Video Mistake Detection

This work proposes the first video-language-model post-training technique for mistake detection, which uses a tailored reward function to encourage the model to identify discrepancies between an instruction and the corresponding video, and generalizes especially well to unseen procedures.

Federico Spurio, Olga Zatsarynna, Lars Doorenbos et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Aug 2026

Quantum Federated Learning Based on Bures--Uhlmann Geometry for Heterogeneous Noisy Clients

This work employs the Bures metric as a local preconditioner and uses the mean Uhlmann curvature to develop an achievable-precision aggregation rule that dynamically down-weights unreliable clients and establishes theoretical guarantees by proving a convergence theorem and a variance-dominance proposition.

Haruki Emori, Masaki Uchihara, Yuuki Tokunaga · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Aug 2026

Localizing Global Discrepancies: Marginal Contributions and Contextual Anomaly Detection

Global goodness-of-fit and discrepancy statistics can establish that a sample departs from a reference distribution without identifying which observations drive the departure. We develop a framework for this localization problem by assigning to each observation its conditional or marginal contribution across random statistical contexts. This connects resampling diagnostics and data valuation to projection theory and event-level anomaly detection. For symmetric statistics, fixed-size replacement is exactly equivalent to centered conditional localization. For U-statistics, the addition score equals the first Hoeffding/H\'ajek contribution; for smooth distributional functionals it is related at leading order to the influence function; and for unbiased known-background MMD it reduces exactly to the MMD witness. This viewpoint also yields more efficient estimators. Matched-context subtraction removes fluctuations unrelated to the observation, while for pairwise MMD the event-containing terms give a simple localizer. On the LHC Olympics anomaly-detection benchmark, the pair estimator converges to the direct empirical MMD witness with the predicted 1/(Rm^2) scaling, where m is batch size and R the number of batches. At m=1000 and R=5x106 it reaches correlation 0.9993 with essentially identical AUC. We also ask when context contains information beyond an event's own features. In a shared-latent toy model, the full single-event signal and background distributions are identical by construction, forcing isolated-event AUC=0.5. Discriminating information survives only in cross-event dependence induced by the shared latent parameter; the ensemble recovers this information, whereas an independent-latent control does not. This separates two roles of context: efficient localization of a global discrepancy and genuinely additional class information when the alternative contains shared structure.

Tommaso dorigo · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Aug 2026

Real-Time Monitoring of MHD Liquid Metal Flows with Shallow Recurrent Decoders

State estimation in magnetohydrodynamic flows is critical for real-time monitoring of liquid metal blankets in tokamak fusion reactors. Due to the multiphysics nature of these phenomena, high-fidelity simulations are computationally prohibitive for real-time applications. This work investigates a data- driven Reduced Order Model framework: the Shallow Recurrent Decoder (SHRED) coupled with Principal Component Analysis, to map sparse temperature measurements to the full thermo-hydraulic system's state. The major contribution of this work lies in the two-parameter analysis of a fully three-dimensional domain representative of the DEMO breeding blanket configuration. Here, the flow is subjected to an external magnetic field varying in direction and intensity and is hindered by two cylinders acting as a water-cooling system, which impose a temperature boundary condition on their surfaces. This double-parametric magnetic variation induces nonlinear transitions in the flow dynamics, ranging from chaotic behavior at low magnetic field intensities to laminarized regimes at high intensities, characterized by the formation of asymmetric side layers at an inclination angle of 30 degrees. SHRED reconstruction maintains a mean relative error of approximately 5% for the temperature, pressure, and velocity fields. This accuracy is maintained across both weak and strong magnetic fields, ranging from 0.075 T to 0.300 T, and for inclination angles from 5 to 30 degrees, reflecting its dominant toroidal component. These errors are only slightly larger than the lower error bound dictated by low-rank truncation. The results establish SHRED as a reliable state estimator for complex and realistic engineering applications involving completely unseen parametric scenarios and validate it as an accurate real-time state estimation technique suitable for online monitoring and control of real facilities.

Claudio Scardino, Stefano Riva, Carolina Introini et al. · 0 citations

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MIT News · Artificial Intelligence Aug 27, 2026

Looking beyond natural sequences

A new machine-learning framework aims to improve the success rate of computational protein design while moving away from results that reproduce sequences found in nature.

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