The reliability and safety of artificial intelligence (AI), together with their transfer and evolution through knowledge distillation, have attracted growing attention. We establish an information-theoretic bound on the reliability--safety trade-off and characterize the dynamics of this trade-off under knowledge distillation. We first prove a universal trade-off inequality that is independent of the specific model form. Its boundary is determined solely by a single parameter Kh, which quantifies the hidden layer's ability to distinguish benign from hazardous inputs. We then develop a canonical Boltzmann-machine model of AI response behavior and derive two exact relations between reliability and safety. The trade-off curve is determined by the hazard discrimination capacity K, while the overall answer tendency controls the operating point along the curve. These relations agree well with existing experimental data. In knowledge distillation, we find that teacher responses induce a renormalization of the student model's trade-off parameters. We further use a renormalization-group approach to study multigenerational distillation, deriving exact recursion relations and the associated renormalization-group-like flows for two representative direct intergenerational distillation protocols at arbitrary teacher--student alignment strength. These flows reveal fixed-point structures, long-term dynamics, and critical behavior, yielding testable predictions for the critical transition between capability loss and stable transmission.
Guidance and composition of generative models have applications in visual design, chemistry, and biology. Logical guidance composes conditional scores exactly for diffusion models. However, Flow Matching (FM) and Stochastic Interpolants (SI) learn velocity fields. We show that negation and exclusive disjunction admit exact conditional velocity composition on any interpolant, whereas conjunction, and therefore any formula containing one, is exact on Gaussian paths but in general incurs a drift-interaction error, so composed velocities need not sample the logical target. LOGSI solves this by using score-based re-equilibration as our principled mechanism and falling back to the Gaussian-path velocity rule as an approximate transport predictor. In non-Gaussian bridge problems, generation alternates transport steps with score re-equilibration steps. On image trans fer (EMNIST to CMNIST, CelebA) and QM9 source-to-target molecular editing with logical attribute constraints, LOGSI improves rule conformity at the same network-evaluation budget over composed-velocity baselines, while also improving fidelity on the image tasks. More broadly, LOGSI applies wherever stochastic interpolants need guidance and logical combinations of constraints are natural.
Generative artificial intelligence is rapidly entering knowledge work, and its short-term productivity benefits are increasingly documented. Less is known about what happens, over time, to the knowledge, skills and judgment that remain in people and organizations. This integrative narrative review addresses that question through the construct of cognitive capital: the accumulated, renewable and depletable stock of knowledge, cognitive and metacognitive capabilities, and practices that enables an individual or an organization to learn, interpret information, exercise judgment, solve problems and adapt. We distinguish individual and organizational cognitive capital from the capability of the human-AI system, so that gains in joint performance and losses in human capability can be observed at the same time. Drawing on experimental, field and conceptual work, we propose four mechanisms through which interaction with AI affects cognitive capital: substitution of practice, scaffolding and feedback, metacognitive calibration, and organizational aggregation. Seven principles summarize the current evidence, including that assisted performance differs from retained competence, that the same technology can support or displace learning depending on design and use, and that individual gains can coexist with reduced collective diversity. For each mechanism we derive testable propositions, and we discuss five design levers for organizations as proposals to be validated rather than established practice. We conclude that cognitive capital offers a multilevel frame for governing AI adoption and outline a research agenda centered on longitudinal, multilevel measurement.
Neural-network-based PDE solvers require architectural choices, particularly the number of layers and neurons per layer. Fixing a single Gaussian radial basis function (RBF) feature layer and taking the number of features to the continuum limit removes the need to prescribe a finite feature count or select individual feature centers, thereby reducing representation arbitrariness. Motivated by this principle, we introduce Continuum-Feature Kernel Solver (CFKS), a deterministic framework for PDEs obtained by analytically marginalizing a bounded continuum of Gaussian RBF features. CFKS works directly with the resulting continuum-feature mean kernel and its operator-applied counterparts, parameterized by prescribed Gaussian widths and bounded center distributions. For linear PDEs, CFKS leads to symmetric operator-kernel collocation systems with null-space enforcement of physical constraints. Nonlinear PDEs are addressed through linearized initialization and nonlinear least-squares residual minimization using analytical kernel derivatives and Jacobians. Residual-guided collocation enrichment and sequential space--time-slab marching provide additional resolution strategies, while prescribed multiscale kernel refinement helps resolve localized nonlinear structures. Finite-feature experiments confirm convergence of empirical value and operator Gram matrices toward their continuum counterparts. Numerical studies include oscillatory and multiscale ODEs, irregular-domain Poisson and biharmonic problems, singular perturbations, transient transport equations, and viscous Burgers' equation. The results establish CFKS as a direct computational connection between finite Gaussian-RBF representations and continuum-feature kernel PDE solvers. Codes: https://github.com/vikas-dwivedi-2022/CFKS_Codes
New image-to-3d model. Tags: 3d-generation, geometry-refinement, sparc3d, image-to-3d, en, zh, arxiv:2505.14521, license:other
Cryptographically verifiable C2PA-based Content Credentials (CCs) can be attached to freshly acquired or generated digital images but also to already existing ones with no previous provenance information, for instance after processing through trusted C2PA-enabled software tools. The latter case leads to images with so-called partial CCs, which capture only the last operations applied, while prior provenance remains unknown and can be investigated through signal forensics. This paper addresses the forensic analysis of such images, highlighting the opportunity to leverage the partial CCs as additional trusted knowledge to adapt forensic detectors towards the statistical characteristics of the image under analysis and mitigate potential distribution shifts. To this end, a two-step strategy is envisioned: (i) reconstructing the operations applied by the last signer through a structural analysis of the partial CCs; (ii) exploiting the obtained reconstruction to enhance the forensic detector of the analyst through an adaptation process. An empirical analysis on partial CCs produced by commercial C2PA-enabled software tools through different editing operations is carried out, providing evidence on the feasibility of the reconstruction in practical cases. An experimental case study on the forensic task of synthetic image detection is then presented, showing that the proposed strategy can significantly enhance the performance of state-of-the-art detectors on test images that are postprocessed via C2PA-enabled software tools after being generated/acquired.
On-Policy Self-Distillation (OPSD), which aligns a student model's token-level distribution with that of its self-teacher prompted by privileged context, has emerged as a promising direction to mitigate reward sparsity in sequence-level post-training paradigms. However, OPSD often fails to achieve continuous performance gains during training. In this paper, we find that the model's limited self-teaching capability underlies this phenomenon by generating unreliable guidance on certain samples. To address this problem, we propose Teacher-Evolution Self-Distillation (TESD), which enables the self-teacher to generate rollouts and receive environmental feedback based on task correctness and context independence. First, using these rewards as training objectives, we perform teacher-oriented optimization to continuously enhance the model's self-teaching capability during distillation. Second, by estimating teacher guidance reliability from these rewards, we apply adaptive student-oriented optimization to down-weight samples with unreliable guidance. Extensive experiments across multiple datasets and model scales show that TESD consistently outperforms representative token-level and sequence-level methods, highlighting the necessity of improving supervision quality in OPSD.
Autonomous far-range rocket landing is a challenging control problem because navigation, descent-rate regulation, attitude management, and fuel use must be coordinated in the presence of uncertain atmospheric and vehicle dynamics. This paper presents a curriculum-driven proximal policy optimization (PPO) framework for three-dimensional rocket landing in a stochastic environment incorporating altitude-dependent aerodynamic drag, wind shear, temporally correlated turbulence, discrete gusts, uncertain propulsion and aerodynamic parameters, thrust-vector misalignment, engine lag, actuator-gain variation, noisy observations, and command latency. Learning is organised into far-range approach, soft descent, and integrated landing stages. Policy transfer, critic warm-up after reward changes, rehearsal of earlier tasks, and progressive expansion of weather severity are used to support learning across these coupled phases. Across 100,000 evaluation episodes, the policy achieves 96,656 successful landings, corresponding to a success rate of 96.656\% and a 95\% Wilson confidence interval of 96.543--96.766\%. Success decreases from 98.84\% under zero-disturbance conditions to 88.07\% in the highest weather-severity band. Successful touchdowns exhibit small miss distances and low residual horizontal and vertical velocities. An exploratory logistic-regression analysis identifies mean wind speed as the strongest measured correlate of success, with initial distance, initial altitude, initial vertical velocity, and wind-shear exponent also associated with outcomes. The results quantify both the effectiveness of the learned policy over the evaluated disturbance distribution and the degradation that occurs under severe compound atmospheric conditions.
Large language models (LLMs) frequently fail at multi-digit arithmetic, but the underlying mechanisms governing these failures remain poorly understood. While recent work demonstrates that addition errors follow a "noisy quantisation" model localised around carry boundaries, whether this framework generalises to multiplication remains an open question. In this work, we evaluate multiplication capabilities across several small base LLMs on a dataset of 16,991 problems spanning varied operand lengths. We show that multiplication errors do not conform to the addition-style noisy quantisation model. Instead, we uncover a novel error regime in small Qwen models: errors in lower-order columns predominantly preserve parity. Conversely, higher-order digit errors shift toward off-by-one carry failures. Our findings suggest that arithmetic computation in LLMs relies on distinct, multi-periodic internal representations where parity is tracked more robustly than exact digit identity, providing new mechanistic insights into numerical reasoning in transformers.
Financial assistants answer questions that sound factual but depend on what the user leaves unsaid: what a data figure measures, which product variant is meant, and the investor's situation and the rules that apply. An assistant that ignores these can still answer with a real number from its data, one that answers a different question. We call this frame collapse. We study it in Indian mutual funds, where product variants and tax rules are formally defined, so the correct answer can be computed for every reading. One study tests each challenge. Given an ambiguously labelled figure, models used it, often under the user's label. Given every alternative labelled, they listed them all, but the layout decided which came first. Missing a fact about the investor, weaker agents assumed a default or an outdated tax rule; requiring the fact did not guarantee its use. Because such answers match their data, checks against the data pass them. An AI judge caught mislabelled figures only when told what each field means, and still passed answers that silently chose another reading. We show how these failures arise, not how often, and propose controls for financial assistants.
Jev enables efficient decision-making with large language models (LLMs) through typed querying primitives, allowing the same semantic state to be expressed in different formats, such as binary and multiple-choice queries. However, the consistency of decisions across primitives has not been systematically evaluated. This work introduces PrimaCons, a four-axis benchmark for assessing cross-primitive consistency while preserving the semantics of the query. Evaluations across three Jev sizes reveal consistency violations across all four axes. Our analysis shows that these violations follow systematic patterns and that cross-primitive discrepancies predict decision failure with a ROC-AUC of 0.91. To mitigate these inconsistencies, we propose the Cross-Primitive Residual Calibrator (CPRC), which attaches a lightweight residual network to a frozen backbone and jointly optimizes predictive accuracy and cross-primitive consistency. Under a leave-one-domain-out protocol, CPRC reduces cross-primitive inconsistency by 58.57% and improves accuracy by +2.97%., demonstrating its effectiveness in both in-domain and out-of-domain settings. Our findings establish cross-primitive consistency as a key dimension for evaluating Jev and provide a practical approach to improving the reliability of its decisions. Code and benchmark is available at https://github.com/67L1/PrimaCons-CRPR.
LLM agents increasingly perform consequential actions through external tools, yet their proposed actions are often executed without independent verification of policy compliance or task completion. We introduce JevAct, a runtime verification framework that intercepts selected agent actions before execution and enables feedback-driven correction. JevAct compiles domain policies into executable state checks and structured questions evaluated by a prefill-only decision model, which produces probability-based judgments without relying on LLM generation. By combining deterministic verification of tool-state facts with probabilistic assessment of conversational context, the framework identifies potentially invalid actions and premature task termination, providing targeted feedback for bounded revision. JevAct operates independently of the underlying agent model and requires no modifications to its parameters or tools. We evaluate JevAct across eleven LLM agents on τ^2-bench Airline and Telecom tasks and BFCL. Results show improvements in agent reliability across multiple models and benchmarks, with particularly consistent gains on Telecom and BFCL, while performance on Airline is more mixed. Overall, these findings suggest that combining structured decision models with executable verification can improve the reliability of tool-using LLM agents.
We ask what AI coding agents and AI security harnesses find that deterministic static application security testing (SAST) does not, and what they miss that SAST catches. VulnBench 2.0 is a benchmark of 108 hand-curated, attacker-reachable vulnerabilities in 20 open-source web applications in Go, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python and Java; 62 flow across more than one file. A finding is credited only if it locates the vulnerability's attacker-controlled source and its dangerous sink, each within two lines. We evaluate nine productized configurations under one blind protocol: the Snyk Code static analyzer, Claude Code's /security-review with three model and effort settings (one with the Snyk MCP server), Codex Security with GPT-5.6 Luna, Terra and Sol, and the DeepSec scanner with two model backends. Snyk Code reached 82.4% macro recall (89 of 108) and Claude Code with Opus 5 at xhigh effort 79.3% (85 of 108); they disagree on 28 vulnerabilities, split 16 to 12, too few to tell them apart. Neither engine was sufficient alone: together they reached 101 of 108, the ceiling of all seven comparable configurations combined, and the AI configurations also reported at least seven real vulnerabilities that the reference set did not contain and Snyk Code did not report. What an AI engine misses depends on its harness as much as on its model: without Claude Code's built-in review policy, the same model matched 16 instead of 9 of the 20 vulnerabilities in the classes that policy excludes or restricts (supplementary run on 19 of 20 applications); Codex Security with GPT-5.6 Sol located 80 vulnerabilities at file level but 34 at line level; DeepSec's model-free file selection kept a file from only 56 of the 108 flows. Coverage and cost were only loosely related. The harness, fixtures, reference sets and all run data are public.
When an LLM agent fails, repair methods choose which action to replace and what to put in its place. They often score candidate repairs with greedy replay, a stronger model, an environment oracle, or a judge that reads the failed log. We ask whether these evaluators pick repairs that help the agent that will actually execute them. Holding failed trajectories and candidate single-step repairs fixed, we label every candidate with independent rollouts of the deployed policy and measure how much deployment value each evaluator's choice loses. On failures not screened for repair value, pre-specified tests show that greedy replay loses 0.08-0.13 in expected net success gain in ALFWorld and 0.06-0.13 in net reward in WebShop, relative to selection with the deployed agent's own rollouts. At an equal rollout budget, selecting repairs for Qwen2.5-7B with Qwen2.5-14B rollouts loses 0.25 in ALFWorld and 0.07 in WebShop, twenty 14B rollouts per candidate are worth no more than two of the 7B agent's own, and fresh rollouts confirm that the two models prefer opposite repairs on selected disagreement cases. Between similar-sized models from different families, the losses appear in both directions in both environments (0.07-0.17). The scoring executor also changes repair-location labels and method rankings. Repairs should be verified with the executor that will run them, and repair labels should name their executor.
Artificial personality shapes user experience (UX) in human-machine interaction, yet coherent theoretical frameworks and validated measurement instruments remain limited. This paper refines and empirically evaluates the Artificial Personality Model (APM), a hybrid framework integrating human-centred and machine-specific personality dimensions. Across three experiments (N = 395), the model was operationalised and evaluated using the Artificial Personality Questionnaire (APQ). Factor analyses revealed that some human personality dimensions (e.g., agreeableness, conscientiousness) are partially transferable, whereas others (e.g., extraversion) did not emerge as distinct dimensions. Additional machine-specific dimensions were identified. The APQ provided encouraging initial psychometric evidence, while the human-centred BFI-2 showed poor reliability and an uninterpretable factor structure in Experiment 3. Experimental manipulations demonstrated significant effects of artificial personality on user satisfaction, continuous use intention, and social presence. The findings contribute an empirically refined framework and a novel instrument for measuring perceived artificial personality, offering practical guidance for designing conversational agents.
New any-to-any model. Tags: lfm3_omni, image-text-to-text, liquid, lfm3, lfm3-omni, omni, audio, vision
