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natural language processing

9,568 papers

#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Walk fast but be careful: Understanding Parallel Sampling in Masked Diffusion

In this paper, we use random walks on graphs as a verifiable sandbox for studying parallel sampling strategies in masked diffusion models (MDMs). We train an MDM on random walk samples from a fixed graph. The graph and transition kernel are never shown to the model and serve as latent structure that is both controllabl...

Vansh Bansal, Cholyeon Cho, Syamantak Kumar et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

MixedPEFT: Combining Multiple PEFT Methods with Mixed Objectives for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation

Applying pre-trained language models to new domains through full fine-tuning is computationally expensive and prone to catastrophic forgetting. To address this limitation, we introduce a novel parameter-efficient strategy for unsupervised domain adaptation that combines a custom PEFT architecture with mixed-objective t...

Mohammed Rawhani, Dervi\c{s} Karabo\u{g}a, \"Ozkan Ufuk Nalbanto\u{g}lu et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

An LLM-Native Psychometric Instrument Reveals a Self-Report--Behavior Gap Across 25 Models

Do large language models' (LLMs') answers to self-report questionnaires predict how they behave? Prior work finds they do not, but it uses human personality inventories, so the gap could reflect borrowed human constructs rather than LLM self-report itself. We test this with a self-report instrument built from LLM-speci...

Juan Manuel Contreras · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

WRIT: Write-Read Intensive Trajectory Synthesis for Multi-Turn User-Facing Agents

Multi-turn user-facing agents must infer user intent from incomplete requests, collect missing information through dialogue and tools, and execute valid actions. A training trajectory records this process as an interleaved sequence of user messages, agent responses, tool calls, etc. Synthesizing sufficiently complex tr...

Hengrui Gu, Xiaotian Han, Kaixiong Zhou · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Handle with CARE: Can LLMs Reproduce How Online Communities React?

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used as proxies for computational social analysis, yet faithfully representing the "thick descriptions" (Geertz, 1973) of human communities remains a critical challenge. Current evaluations often reduce social identity to static labels, sidelining how real-world groups navi...

Nuan Wen, Chanbin Lim, Xuezhe Ma · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Steering Without Breaking: Mechanistically Informed Interventions for Discrete Diffusion Language Models

Discrete diffusion language models (DLMs) generate text by iteratively denoising all positions in parallel, offering an alternative to autoregressive models. Controlled generation methods for DLMs, imported from autoregressive models, apply uniform intervention at every denoising step. We show this uniform schedule is...

Hanhan Zhou, Shamik Roy, Rashmi Gangadharaiah · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

APCD: Adaptive Path-Contrastive Decoding for Reliable Large Language Model Generation

Reliable text generation is critical for deploying large language models (LLMs) in real-world applications, particularly in high-stakes domains such as medicine. To improve factual reliability, various inference-time methods have been proposed, including logit-level methods that modify token probability distributions a...

Tianyu Zheng, Hong Wu, Jiaji Zhong · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Seeing Is No Longer Believing: Frontier Image Generation Models, Synthetic Visual Evidence, and Real-World Risk

Image generation systems can produce plausible photographs, readable documents, and consistent depictions of people and places. When these artifacts are presented as records of real events, they can influence decisions in news, finance, identity verification, medicine, and law. This narrative review examines selected p...

Shuai Wu, Xue Li, Zhijun Wang et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Attention-Mass Condensation for Sparse Decoding

Attention-mass concentration creates an opportunity for sparse decoding, but retained mass alone does not guarantee a stable greedy decision: retrieval error, omitted value directions, and recursive decoding all matter. We formalize this distinction with an exact omitted-mass identity and a sufficient downstream margin...

Jorge L. Ruiz Williams · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Open access Sep 2025

SEER: Self-Enhancing Chain-of-Thought Compression for Reasoning Models

SEER (Self-Enhancing Efficient Reasoning), a self-enhancing framework for adaptive CoT compression, improves the conciseness of reasoning while preserving output quality, without relying on external compression tools.

Ke-Rui Huang, Shu-Han Liu, Xing Hu et al. · 9 citations · ⚡2
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

APE: Selective Fine-tuning with Acceptance Criteria for Language Model Adaptation

We present Adjacent Possible Exploration (APE), a selective fine-tuning method for adapting large language models that systematically explores parameter modifications while maintaining model stability. Inspired by evolutionary optimization principles, APE evaluates multiple candidate parameter updates through fine-tuni...

Javier Mar\'in · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Beyond Cooperative Simulators: Generating Realistic User Personas for Robust Evaluation of LLM Agents

Large Language Model (LLM) agents are increasingly deployed in settings where they interact with diverse users, including those who are unclear, impatient, or reluctant to share information. However, collecting real interaction data at scale remains expensive. The field has turned to LLM-based \emph{user simulators} as...

Harshita Chopra, Kshitish Ghate, Aylin Caliskan et al. · 0 citations

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Microsoft Research Blog Oct 22, 2026

Flint-interactive: A language for creating interactive data visualizations

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.

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