Typed decision models are language models that answer a question with a fixed set of possible answers by returning a probability for each answer instead of generating text. We study them on tabular data and compare four decision models with three large language models (LLMs) on row classification, fact verification and...
Bao-Wen Zhang, Hangting Ye, Hong-Yuan Zha· 1 citation
A unified framework that models both student responses to questions and tutor-posed subtasks during dialogues on a shared item response theory (IRT) scale is proposed and results show that the framework outperforms strong baselines on both question difficulty prediction and response correctness prediction.
Zhang-Qi Duan, Simon Woodhead, Maya Miller-Vedam et al.· 0 citations
Best-of-N sampling is a simple inference-time scaling strategy for large language models, yet its behavior under incomplete reward models remains poorly understood. We study Best-of-N as a competition between the extreme reward tails of correct and incorrect responses. This view shows that success depends not only on t...
The competing-target test is introduced: a vector is compared with the vector built the same way for a competing target, and an equivalence test states when their difference is below a useful margin.
Wei-Lun Xu, Zi-Peng Sun· 0 citations
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Layer-ablation studies often perturb early or late layers of a language model, compare the damage to prediction on two corpora, and read a larger early-layer effect on one corpus as early-layer specialization for its task. Such a comparison averages over the tokens that each corpus asks the model to predict, and these...
Recent advancements in topic modeling have split into two main paths: efficient embedding-based methods that offer scalability but are often outperformed on standard clustering metrics, and Large Language Model (LLM) approaches that achieve state-of-the-art clustering performance but at the cost of prohibitive computat...
Matthew Raffel, Li-Zhong Chen, Sai Munikoti et al.· Conference on Empirical Meth...· 0 citations
Can AI agents carry out research on open scientific problems? We introduce Into the Unknown, a benchmark that provides an agent with a science paper along with a research direction to pursue and tasks it to write a follow-up paper. We work with scientists at US Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories, who each...
Seungone Kim, Jia-Yi Geng, Young-Jun Lee et al.· 3 citations· ⚡1
In-context learning (ICL) allows language models to adapt their behavior from instructions and demonstrations in a prompt, but accuracy alone does not reveal how contextual information controls their predictions. We study the acquisition and trainability of ICL with a controlled diagnostic that separates copying a near...
Minglai Yang, Xin-Yu Guo, Ren-Xiong Wang et al.· 0 citations
Chatbot Arena ranks language models with the Bradley-Terry model, which gives each model one score and so assumes Luce's choice axiom. Choice theory predicts where this fails: near-copies are told apart more decisively than their scores imply. On 1.8 million Arena votes, votes between versions of one model are 1.37 tim...
S. Bakshi, Apurba Bose, Aishwarya Bose et al.· 0 citations
Coordinators that act on what they infer about teammates are usually certified by the accuracy of those inferences. We argue that accuracy is the wrong certificate, for two reasons. First, the accuracy needed to act depends on what a wrong action costs, so the bar belongs to the deployment, not the module. Second, a mo...
Modern coding agents are fundamentally reshaping the role of human input for computational research: they write code, launch in silico experiments, analyze their results, and autonomously operate with ever-increasing time horizons. Despite these developments, fully autonomous research agents suffer from a limited ideat...
R. Lange, Luca Grillotti, Yutaro Yamada et al.· 3 citations
Voice agents built on large language models (LLMs) now handle customer calls, but in regulated applications completing the task is not enough: the agent must follow a conversational flow set by law. In debt collection, it must confirm it is speaking to the debtor before mentioning the debt, identify itself and the cred...
Flint-interactive gives AI agents a language for creating interactive visualizations. Click a chart, filter data, highlight related content, and explore beyond the view the author originally chose. The post Flint-interactive: A language for creating interactive data visualizations appeared first on Microsoft Research.
A new computational approach reveals how cells communicate to assemble into tissues. This could accelerate stem cell engineering, improve disease models, and inform therapies.
Microsoft Research Blog· microsoft.comOct 15, 2026
Zero-knowledge proofs can verify computing results without rerunning workloads or exposing sensitive data. Magnetar helps bring them into the mainstream with support for standard programming languages, major speed gains, and quantum-resistant security. The post Proof-based general-purpose computing with Magnetar appeared first on Microsoft Research.
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