Mark Solms, St John Grimbly, Bruce Bassett +7cs.AI q-bio.NC
Creatures that display 'hedonic place preference behaviour' are thought by many scientists to experience feelings, on the assumption that their attraction to pleasure-producing substances which lack nutritional value (e.g. cocaine, morphine) cannot easily be attributed to unconscious instinctual behaviour. In this paper, we discuss how a simple artificial agent that instantiates attributes of an affective system engaging in felt uncertainty about its intrinsic needs in relation to environmental resources can similarly display hedonic place preference behaviour -- through an apparently subjective form of information processing -- while simultaneously being entirely deter-ministic. We outline some implications of this artificially engineered behaviour for our understanding of the physical basis of consciousness and the experience of free will.
Target-centered gaze interaction requires more than suppressing frame-to-frame fluctuations: target acquisition produces task-aligned changes in gaze-head dynamics, while a gaze trace may retain a persistent target-relative residual direction. We formulate gaze correction as online target-centered gaze-trajectory forecasting and stabilization and introduce GazeFS, which maps a variable-length gaze-head history to the next target-center direction and a short-horizon Search/Focus estimate without target information at inference. Across 7,960 acquisition episodes from 30 participants, Search-Focus differences remain stable under quality control, onset exclusion, and duration matching. History windows improve phase decoding over the current endpoint, but explicit task progress remains a strong control. Under the 30-participant, five-fold grouped out-of-fold protocol across three seeds, the reductions relative to raw hold in Focus episode bias, within-episode dispersion, and P90 target error are 0.182 degrees, 0.257 degrees, and 0.400 degrees, with participant-bootstrap 95% confidence intervals excluding zero. Endpoint-free replay from empty history preserves the Focus advantage and yields raw-network phase balanced accuracy/AUPRC of 0.925/0.993; coordinate controls further show that recent history contributes beyond explicit progress metadata. GazeFS therefore improves Focus target centering and empirical residual contraction while leaving temporal smoothness as a separate objective.
We study the allocation of indivisible goods among agents with identical additive valuations, focusing on envy-freeness up to one good (EF1) and Nash social welfare (NSW). Since every maximum-NSW allocation is EF1 under additive valuations, the associated threshold problem inherits the known strong NP-hardness of NSW maximization under identical additive valuations and is strongly NP-complete. We therefore focus on welfare guarantees satisfied by arbitrary EF1 allocations. Although every such allocation is known to achieve an $e^{-1/e}$-approximation to the unrestricted optimal NSW, we identify conditions yielding stronger guarantees. Under uniform valuations, every EF1 allocation is NSW-optimal. Under an $\varepsilon$-small-item condition, every EF1 allocation achieves an explicit approximation ratio $ρ_n(\varepsilon)$ satisfying $ρ_n(\varepsilon) = 1-O(\varepsilon^2)$ as $\varepsilon\to 0$ for fixed $n$. We further consider the stronger sequential requirement that EF1 be maintained after every item assignment. For this setting, we propose \emph{PriorityNet}, a deep reinforcement learning framework trained using Proximal Policy Optimization and equipped with prospective EF1 action masking. The mask restricts every decision to assignments that preserve EF1, thereby guaranteeing prefix-wise EF1 by construction without post-processing repair. Across 3,000 test instances in each of the offline and random-order online regimes ($n\in[2,20]$ and $m\in[5,100]$), PriorityNet attains mean normalized $\operatorname{NSW}$ values of $0.9911$ and $0.9701$, respectively. Relative to offline Longest Processing Time (LPT) and online least-valued-bundle baselines, it achieves instance-wise win-minus-loss rates of $+27.10\%$ and $+17.87\%$, while matching the offline baseline's mean normalized welfare to four decimal places and modestly improving the online mean from $0.9694$ to $0.9701$.
Knowledge graphs describe reality in crisp assertions, while the systems now consuming them, foundation models and autonomous agents, reason natively in probabilities. We argue that this mismatch is why the integration of language models and knowledge graphs remains a data-feeding pipeline rather than a unified reasoning architecture. We envision Semantic Bayesian World Models (SBWMs): a Web that describes the world not as a database of facts but as a shared, evolving fabric of beliefs over knowledge graphs, where ontological axioms constrain priors, observations update beliefs by Bayesian conditioning, and actions intervene upon the world. We work through what an agent gains from such a model: a home-security agent deciding whether the figure at the gate is a courier or a burglar, an actuarial estimate aggregated by entailment rather than by string frequency, a planning task that language models reliably fail, and the estimation of quantities that no document has ever stated. We then set out what the community must build to make them possible: belief annotation over RDF~1.2, probabilistic entailment regimes, semantic calibration layers, and protocols by which agents that have never met can exchange, and disagree over, calibrated beliefs.
We study the ordered Bernoulli-word kernel f(p,n,k)=p^k(1-p)^(n-k) and the geometry generated by its inverse-integer level sets. The binary level 2^(-n) selects p=1/2 as the unique real split-independent anchor. Under complement-preserving complex continuation, the pair becomes z=1/2+iu and 1-z=1/2-iu, producing a conjugation-symmetric vertical geometry before any zeta-function input is introduced. The quadratic coordinate Q(z)=z(1-z)=1/4+u^2 has a sharp minimum at the central point and admits an exact integer quantization. For critical-line zero ordinates gamma_k, the induced levels L_k=1/4+gamma_k^2 are decomposed exactly as L_k=N_k+delta_k, where N_k is the nearest integer and delta_k is a periodic first-Bernoulli residual. Circularization gives Z_k=exp(2 pi i delta_k), isolating gamma_k^2 mod 1 as the residual phase variable. Unique factorization resolves the integer shells into prime-generator coordinates, while a distinct complex exponent s lifts the same construction to the Dirichlet atoms m^(-s), linking the Dirichlet-series and Euler-product assemblies. Exact identities, classical zeta connections, numerical controls, and open conditional Weyl tests are kept explicitly separate. No proof of the Riemann Hypothesis is claimed.
Francesco Vitucci, Giuseppe Silvi, Daniele Giuseppe Annese +2cs.CL
In numerical signal processing for electroacoustic composition, the progressive loss of specific development and research environments caused by the increasing use of digital market tools has favoured the dominance of the closed-architecture audio processor model. This model, while powerful, envisions the possibility of describing output data about its perceived characteristics, but at the cost of ignoring its internal process and interacting systems, which become complex, powerful environments but closed in an inscrutable black box, a loss we must consider. Any digital signal processing technique tells a story. Just as the words of a language incorporate social, historical and technical polysemic layers, a signal processor has its own story of implementation, a gradual technological achievement with its inevitable aesthetic consequences. Through the looking-glass of literature, one can access those environments with renewed awareness by reestablishing a scientific method and an attitude to research. In this specific case, starting from the case study of Manfred Schroeder's historical reverbs, we illustrate the process of building analytical evaluation tools, as well as practical implementation, at the basis of a conscious study path.
We present our submission to the IJCAI 2025 'Counterfactual Routing Competition' (CRC 25). The goal of the competition is to find counterfactual explanations for the shortest path problem. This requires deciding what the minimal changes to a road network would make a route chosen by the user the optimal route. This enables explanations such as "Your suggested route would indeed have been optimal, if road X were not a bicycle path." Our solution models the problem as an integer program, iteratively incorporating constraints until an exact solution is found. In the final evaluation on held-out test instances, our method ranked fourth in solution quality and obtained its solution fastest on every instance, with an average runtime of 9.0 seconds compared to 118.8 seconds for the next-fastest submission.
Let $L\subseteqΣ^*$ and fix a morphism $h:Σ^*\to M$ into a finite monoid. We study exact factorization and canonical presentation in the relative syntactic congruence $θ_{L,h}:=\equiv_L\cap\ker h$. We separate unique factorization from finite direct presentation. An exhaustively computer-checked $36$-element quotient has a unique exact prime factorization for every live non-unit class, yet its valid prime-return rules contain an infinite family, so unique factorization does not imply the finite relative presentation property (FRP), even for a finite quotient. We lift the same defect to a nonregular context-free language with an infinite relative quotient and finite prime spectrum. To isolate the obstruction, we introduce the finite-state relative presentation property (FSRP), in which canonical valid right-hand-side languages are represented by finite residual controllers, and prove $\mathrm{FRP}\subsetneq\mathrm{FSRP}$. We then introduce prime-target left-division determinism (PTLD), which implies unique exact factorization, tail exactness, tail determinism, and a quadratic bound on valid rules. A nonregular deterministic context-free example with a finite group observer satisfies PTLD while lying outside every fixed $(k,\ell)$-substitutable class. Finally, for fixed $h$ we give a strong positive-data learner for the canonical PTLD presentation with polynomial-time hypothesis updates and a finite characteristic sample, together with a limit reconstruction of the canonical FSRP controller from weakly behaviorally correct CFG-valued learners.
Smoothness of a function on the real line is reflected in the decay of its Fourier transform, which suggests that smoothness of a function in $L^2(G)$ for a group $G$ should mean concentration of the Fourier coefficients at low frequency. Such a reading presupposes an ordering of the irreducible representations of $G$, but for non-abelian $G$, no ordering is canonical. Given a symmetric generating set $S$, the Laplacian of the associated Cayley graph is block diagonal over the dual, and we order the irreps by the mean of the eigenvalues in each block. This produces an ordering function $ω:\widehat{G}\to\mathbb{R}$ that depends only on the pair $(G,S)$. This function is bounded between zero and two, vanishing only at the trivial representation and achieving the upper bound exactly when the Cayley graph is bipartite. We then ask how much freedom the construction has. Within the class of operators satisfying natural axioms, the induced orderings are exactly the real functions on the dual vanishing at the trivial representation and agreeing on conjugate pairs, and the orderings coming from inversion orbits of conjugacy classes form a basis for them. We cut the freedom down further by requiring two additional inputs: nonnegativity of the class weights and a declaration of which group elements count as uniform incremental changes, which pins the operator to the Cayley-Laplacian up to positive scale. We observe that the construction persists for compact groups even though the Cayley graph does not, and we extend the theory to finite sets carrying a transitive group action, where the acting group selects which frequencies exist and the generating set orders them. The answer to the title question is therefore that smoothness is a property of a function together with a choice of group and generating set, not of the function alone.
For more than 20 years, the Model-RB benchmark frb100-40 remained an open challenge; since 2014, its public record had stood at 99 of 100 variables. We give a directly checkable 100-vertex independent set for its 4,000-vertex graph. Together with a verified partition into 100 cliques of size 40, the witness proves that the maximum independent-set size is 100 and the minimum vertex-cover size is 3,900. The stochastic run that found the witness is kept separate from this proof. We evaluated its added pair and triple repair operators in a preregistered campaign comprising 8,668 valid runs. The primary comparison found no detectable acceleration over base ULSA (hazard ratio 0.967, 95% confidence interval 0.915-1.023; p=0.248), and the factorial ablation reached the same conclusion. On a smaller FRB suite, the group-aware CSP pipeline solved 2,500/2,500 runs, compared with 2,391/2,500 for LibMVC-NuMVC. On frb100-40, full ULSA, base ULSA, and NuMVC each produced 0/56 new certificates. With no events, the planned cross-solver hazard ratios remain unidentified. NuMVC ended with cover size 3,902 in 40 runs and 3,903 in 16. Exhaustive enumeration showed that none of the 108 unique recorded conflict-two states had a strictly improving group-aware CSP neighbor within Hamming radius three. The certificate settles the instance. The experiments characterize the search barrier, and the preregistered comparisons show no heuristic advantage.
Existing Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) literature has focused on identifying and structuring errors, failures, conflicts, and knowledge issues (called in this work as contradictions) in domain-specific dialogue-based interactions. However, there is still lack of a formal computational framework to represent and define these contradictions, interoperable and usable across HRI and human-agent interaction (HAI) domains. Thus, this research project aims to capture, represent, and evaluate the notion of (1) dialogue-based collaborative interaction and (2) related contradictions in a foundational ontology. METHONTOLOGY, a systematic approach to build domain-independent ontologies was applied. In the conceptualisation stage of the presented ontology, concepts and models from Activity Theory were used. Preliminary results presented in this short article are: (i) Natural language definitions of dialogues and related contradictions in HRI, (ii) Set Theoretic definitions of dialogues and contradictions, and (iii) First Order Logic (FoL) formulation of the contradiction concepts and three novel principles guiding dialogue-based interactions between humans and robots. In summary, we report on ongoing work to develop a foundational ontology based on Activity Theory called Activity Theory-based foundational ontology (ATFOt) to capture and represent the notion of contradictions in HRI.
Parth Desai, Rasheed M, Ganesh Ghalme +1cs.GT cs.AI
While traditional stable matching algorithms, such as the Gale-Shapley algorithm, prioritize stability, they may fall short of achieving equitable outcomes among participants. We study the role of \emph{Nash social welfare} (NSW) as a fairness objective in the classic \emph{stable marriage problem}. We develop \texttt{SNSW-Alg} that finds a stable matching that maximizes Nash social welfare under rank-induced utilities in $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(n^4)$ time, where $n$ is the number of men or women. We demonstrate that \texttt{SNSW-Alg} balances equity while preserving stability. We empirically evaluate our methods across diverse preference distributions, demonstrating significant gains in fairness without substantial losses in other key measures such as regret, egalitarian criterion, and sex equality. Our findings suggest that the stable matching produced by \texttt{SNSW-Alg} is statistically Pareto-undominated by stable matchings based on other fairness measures - regret, egalitarian, and sex equality. This study offers compelling insights for designing fair-stable matching.
Quantum generative models offer a promising framework for exploring whether quantum computation can enhance generative machine learning. Flow matching is a generative method in which samples are generated by transporting a simple, known distribution to the target data distribution with a learned velocity field. Its quantum counterpart, known as quantum flow matching (QFM), was introduced recently, and, like its classical counterpart, requires integrating an ordinary differential equation over many time steps during inference. As each step requires the output from the previous step, the circuit submission is sequential and a drawback on quantum computers as they have high input/output costs. To alleviate this problem, we introduce Quantum MeanFlow (QMF), the quantum analogue of the MeanFlow formulation, which allows single-step sample generation. While the QFM learns an instantaneous velocity field at each time step, QMF learns the average velocity over a time interval. We use a parameterized quantum circuit to learn these velocity fields and benchmark the two methods on the MNIST dataset. We show that while single-step QMF has lower image quality compared to multi-step QFM, it performs better than the single-step QFM sampling at every shot count. Both of our models are executed on IBM quantum computers and best-of-N rejection sampling recovers most of the accuracy lost to device noise without modifying the circuit. This is especially advantageous for QMF which has only one circuit evaluation per image. Here, We establish QMF as a viable method for single-step quantum generative sampling, saving on quantum circuit evaluations per generated sample.
Reliable attractor recall conventionally requires broad basins of attraction. However, in reservoir-computing based associative memory, temporal cues reliably recover dynamical memories despite basins dominated by unpredictable, riddled-like regions. We reveal that memory basins exhibit an ``octopus-like'' structure: a robust ``head'' near the attractor and thin, intertwined ``tentacles'' spanning state space. Initial states in tentacular regions yield near-zero uncertainty exponents, making the recalled memory effectively unpredictable at finite precision. Yet, cue-driven generalized synchronization bypasses this unpredictability, driving the system into the robust basin head. This mechanism yields a quantitative relation linking minimum cue duration, synchronization rate, and basin-head radius. Trained recurrent neural networks exhibit similar geometry, suggesting this phenomenon extends beyond reservoir computing.
Przemysław Stokłosa, Janusz A. Starzyk, Paweł Raifcs.AI
This article presents SSAKG 2.0, an open-source software package for constructing and operating Structural Sequential Associative Knowledge Graphs (SSAKGs). An SSAKG represents objects as graph vertices and ordered sequences as structural patterns of graph connections. The resulting sparse graph is used as an associative memory in which complete sequences can be reconstructed from a partial, unordered context. Version 2.0 introduces new algorithms that exploit individual bits of computer memory to efficiently search graph connections. The package is implemented in Python, while performance-critical graph operations are implemented in C and exposed through a Python interface. This hybrid implementation provides a flexible high-level programming environment while reducing the memory and computational overhead associated with large sparse graphs. The algorithms were evaluated using randomly generated numerical sequences, sequences derived from sentences in the NLTK corpus, and mRNA sequences. The experiments demonstrate the ability of the package to store and reconstruct sequences from partial contexts and provide a basis for evaluating the effects of graph density, sequence length, and memory size on retrieval performance. SSAKG 2.0 is distributed under the Apache 2.0 open-source license. The package includes documentation and reproducible examples and is publicly available through GitHub and the Python Package Index (PyPI).
The browser has become a first-class database host: applications increasingly want to store, query, and reason over structured data entirely on the client - for privacy, offline operation, local-first collaboration, and, most recently, as durable memory for in-browser AI agents. One way to get SQL in the browser, compiling PostgreSQL to WebAssembly (PGlite), inherits PostgreSQL's process model: a single backend connection that executes one statement at a time and blocks. That model cannot express concurrent transactions, and it leaves richer capabilities - graph queries, database branching - to whatever the compiled server happens to include. We present zeta-lite, the browser form factor of the Zeta database engine: a WebAssembly build that compiles the same Zeta server down to a 2.87 MB gzipped artifact. Zeta-lite keeps the engine's log-centric asynchronous MVCC core, which yields two capabilities no other in-browser SQL engine provides. First, overlapping snapshot-isolated transactions on a single thread: multiple transactions hold distinct read/commit timestamps and interleave, with snapshot-isolation conflict detection between them. Second, copy-on-write database branching - whole-database fork, merge, and rebase - is unique in a browser SQL database and rare even in servers. On top of these, zeta-lite exposes a feature-complete PostgreSQL surface (joins, CTEs, window functions, JSONB with GIN indexes, full-text search, HNSW vector search, SQL/PGQ graph queries, multi-database) and snapshot-to-OPFS durability. Across Chrome, Firefox, and a native reference runtime, zeta-lite sustains 268k-315k point reads/s and holds a mixed read/write workload flat over millions of operations. This small, fully-featured, concurrent SQL database is an especially good fit for agentic memory - where cheap branchable state lets an agent explore, inspect, and commit or discard speculative work.
Information sharing can improve a pooled estimate while eliminating independent rescue actions. This paper separates those effects in exact finite discovery models. A centralized action-budget profile shows that equal one-person accuracy can coexist with different portfolio values. Under a registered incremental-sharing protocol, a sharing step improves discovery exactly when pooled residual error contracts faster than an independent rescue attempt. Exact bounded registries exhibit compression, aggregation, neutral curves, and a bounded zero mixed class. In a two-agent Bayesian game with a hidden mixture of common and independent signal sources, the registered selected equilibrium yields a strict positive sharing interval at signal accuracy 3/5, while alternative equilibria show that the result is selection-dependent rather than universal. The models are synthetic and finite; no human or organizational data are used.
A durable assumption holds that graph analytics requires a purpose-built graph engine, and that relational systems are ill-suited to connected data. We argue the opposite for the workloads enterprises actually run. A columnar relational engine fronted by a graph query language matches or exceeds native graph engines on analytical graph queries, and - decisively - scales past the point where in-memory graph engines fail. We further argue that the node/edge property graph is not a more faithful model of connected data but a re-encoding of relationships that already exist explicitly in relational tables; reconstructing them at query time is pure overhead. We present ClickGraph and its Databricks-dialect sibling DeltaGraph, systems that translate Cypher directly onto the native relational schema - the tables, columns, and foreign keys as they already exist - and execute in place on ClickHouse, Databricks, or in-process on lakehouse files, with no import and no separate cluster. Because the output is ordinary SQL, an underperforming query is an open optimization surface: it can be rewritten, and the engine itself extended. We support the argument with a peer system's own published benchmark, in which a columnar engine outruns Neo4j by two-to-four orders of magnitude, and with reproducible measurements across the LDBC Social Network Benchmark suite.
The ability of AI systems to improve their behavior during deployment is becoming increasingly important. As inference moves beyond the static execution of a fixed trained model, a growing body of work studies how models can refine their behavior on the fly by exploiting test-time information and additional computation. These developments have largely evolved along two directions: methods that modify the model's state using test-time signals, and methods that improve predictions through extra inference-time resources such as more sampling and tool use. However, these directions are often studied in separate communities with different terminology, making their connections harder to see. In this survey, we present feedback-driven Test-Time Intelligence (TTI) as a unified perspective for understanding such deployment-time improvement. We use this view to relate test-time adaptation, test-time learning, and test-time scaling, highlighting both their distinctions and their growing overlap in hybrid systems. This unified framework helps connect previously fragmented ideas and provides a clearer conceptual foundation for studying inference-time self-improvement. We review major methodological paradigms, representative applications, and open challenges across vision, language, multimodal learning, generative models, robotics, and healthcare. Our goal is to provide a coherent foundation and research roadmap for the study of self-improving AI systems at test time.
Marcus Rolf Peter Ritt, Alexsandro Santos da Rosa Júnior, Marcos Vinicius Reballo +2cs.LG quant-ph
This work studies hybrid quantum-classical neural networks for learning routing heuristics. Specifically, this paper asks whether small quantum neural networks can replace parameter-heavy modules inside a competitive attention-based routing model while maintaining solution quality. For the capacitated vehicle routing problem, encoder feed-forward replacement emerges as the most promising design: it reduces the number of model parameters by 56.6% while keeping the hybrid model close to the classical neural baseline at small and medium instance sizes, although the gap grows for larger instances. This work also compares to classical routing algorithms, which remain highly competitive and often superior on the fixed Euclidean test sets. Our results therefore do not indicate quantum advantage or solver dominance, but identify encoder feed-forward replacement as a viable hybrid-module compression strategy for neural combinatorial optimization.
Michael L. Roberts, Carlos Zapata Carratalá. Nicholas J. Cooper, Lijun Chen +2cs.LG cs.AI
We provide an expository introduction on the importance of higher-arity tensor operations to deep learning. Then, we conduct a novel empirical investigation of higher-arity phenomenon in trained neural networks, introduce a hypergraphical generalization of the multilayer perceptron, and explore connections to evolutionary algorithms. We conclude with a discussion of promising directions for future research.
Romain Claret, Michael O'Neill, Paul Cotofrei +1cs.NE cs.AI
Neuroevolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) and its advanced version, Evolvable-Substrate HyperNEAT (ES-HyperNEAT), have shown great potential in developing neural networks. However, their effectiveness heavily depends on the selection of hyperparameters. This study investigates the optimization of ES-HyperNEAT hyperparameters using the Tree-structured Parzen Estimator (TPE) on the MNIST classification task, exploring a search space of over 3 billion potential combinations. TPE effectively navigates this vast space, significantly outperforming random search in terms of mean, median, and best accuracy. During the validation process, the best hyperparameter configuration found by TPE achieves an accuracy of 29.00\% on MNIST, surpassing previous studies while using a smaller population size and fewer generations. The transferability of the optimized hyperparameters is explored in logic operations and Fashion-MNIST tasks, revealing successful transfer to the more complex Fashion-MNIST problem but limited to simpler logic operations. This study emphasizes a method to unlock the full potential of neuroevolutionary algorithms and provides insights into the hyperparameters' transferability across tasks of varying complexity.
Robin Lorenz, Eric Brunner, Marcello Benedettiquant-ph cs.LG
With quantum sensors, simulators and networks emerging, a future of quantum technology may produce quantum states as data---that is, coherently rather than as classical measurement records---thus motivating the study of suitable quantum generalisations of modern machine learning, including the automated, unsupervised extraction of useful representations. Two ingredients are central to the latter: inference, mapping observations to latent representations, and generation, mapping latent states back to synthetic data. Both are related to each other and to joint distributions for training models by the chain-rule of classical probability theory. The fact that quantum states however lack such universal, standard factorisation property thus poses a challenge. Here we develop a conceptual and mathematical framework for unsupervised representation learning from quantum data. Models are joint quantum states over visible and latent systems; state-over-time maps provide a notion of factorisation into a marginal state and inference (generation) channel; models with inference (generation) are ambiguous states---states for which such factorisation obtains---subject to a further consistency condition on extended inference maps as data extension. These stipulations are restrictive: we show that non-trivial models must feature non-linear such maps to the extended space. For three representative state-over-time maps, we completely characterise the ambiguous states, uncovering a hierarchy tied to the positive-partial-transpose (PPT) criterion from entanglement theory. Notably, the Leifer-Spekkens construction supports inference and generation exactly for model classes of PPT states, thus allowing genuinely quantum visible-latent correlations. We also formulate quantum counterparts of exact and approximate inference training, explore weaker notions of data extension and sketch a future research programme.
We seek to understand the effect of adding disruptive highly-capable new technologies to competitions by assessing the addition of Dynamite to Rock-Paper-Scissors. We find that providing a versatile Dynamite move to only one player provides limited value (win probability increases from 50% to 55.5%) and is played rarely. That value decreases further if the game is expanded beyond just the original three moves. We also observe several mechanisms by which prior moves can become strategically unplayable, or obsolete. We hope that this model illustrates some non-intuitive aspects of developing new versatile technologies. We also hope that it illustrates some pitfalls for developers and integrators to avoid in order to create value rather than merely capability.
Ruiwu Niu, Xiaowen Bi, Michaël Antonie van Wykcs.LG nlin.AO
Physical learning lets a trainable material or network use its own physical response to carry error signals, reducing the need for a separately programmed backward computation. We ask what determines whether such a system follows conventional gradient descent or evolves along a genuinely different learning trajectory. Our canonical model is a directed layered transport network in which every node redistributes a fixed amount of flow, so learning preserves positivity and total mass. In this model, conservation constrains only the allowable learning directions. Within the matched response class studied here, adjoint matching gives the physical output response a symmetric form. Non-negative mode-wise feedback then produces a reciprocal closed-loop response and a reweighted gradient flow. Adding an antisymmetric boundary component makes the closed-loop response rotational: the learning path can turn while the error driving that update still decreases at that moment. Turning is not automatically beneficial. Its finite-step effect is set by local curvature, and its accumulated effect also depends on step selection and on the new states visited along the path. Numerical consistency checks reproduce the exact response structure, predict the sign of the local effect across new network families, and show how trajectory drift can negate a local advantage. These results separate the roles of conservation, reciprocity, and nonreciprocity in physical learning.
Einari Vaaras, Manu Airaksinen, Okko Räsänencs.HC cs.AI cs.LG cs.SE
We present TSExplorer, a cross-platform tool for interactive annotation and exploration of time-series data. The tool enables users to inspect high-dimensional datasets through multiple complementary 2D visualizations derived from high-dimensional feature representations. TSExplorer is designed as a general-purpose research tool supporting a wide range of workflows, including exploratory data analysis, annotation of unlabeled or partially-labeled datasets, comparison of feature representations, and post-hoc inspection and refinement of existing labels with interactive visual feedback.
Healthcare workforce scheduling is an NP-hard optimization problem requiring simultaneous satisfaction of labor regulations, coverage requirements, employee preferences and cost objectives. Existing approaches (genetic algorithms, integer programming, constraint programming) model 6-12 constraints at shift-level granularity and cannot guarantee regulatory compliance. They also lack support for multi-role, multi-skill heterogeneity, mandatory break scheduling with midpoint control, acuity-weighted workload equity, sub-shift granularity, inter-week stability, and cross-midnight shifts. This paper presents CP-SAT: a Constraint Programming formulation for multi-role, multi-skill healthcare scheduling. CP-SAT enforces 14 hard constraints guaranteeing zero regulatory violations, while optimizing 15 soft objectives via a unified weighted penalty function. Contributions include a shift-window decomposition enabling break scheduling with centrality control, acuity-weighted workload equity, multi-granularity resolution from 15 minutes to 1 day, inter-week stability, and grid-offset preprocessing mapping cross-midnight shifts into a single scheduling day without solver changes. CP-SAT is evaluated on 18 instances: five synthetic hospital units (10-33 nurses), 10 INRC-II benchmarks (5-80 nurses, up to 8-week horizons) and 3 NRP-23 compatible instances (10-25 nurses) with cross-midnight Night shifts. Results: zero hard-constraint violations across all 18 instances by construction; proven optimality on INRC-II n005w4 (objective 118, gap 0.0%, 104s); feasible schedules scaling to 179,800 variables and 351,425 constraints (80 nurses); service quality improved 50-67% over MOGA; and model size scaling near-linearly at approximately 4,400 variables per employee. The formulation enforces 29 total constraints (14 hard, 15 soft), nearly three times the industry average.
The exact Shannon capacity is unknown for every odd cycle beyond the five-cycle $C_5$, making odd cycles a central open problem in zero-error information theory. Improving the known lower bounds requires constructing large independent sets in strong powers of these graphs. Recent AI-assisted work has produced a rapid sequence of improvements: building on the construction of Itty et al., Gao developed a recursive product construction for combining structured independent sets, and Buys, Polak, and Zuiddam (BPZ) subsequently strengthened this through a richer recursion framework. We continue this line of AI-assisted exploration and introduce a heterogeneous refinement of these constructions. The central observation is that the usefulness of an intermediate construction depends not only on the size of its current main independent set, but also on the auxiliary structure it carries into subsequent recursion. Consequently, different parts of that auxiliary structure need not use the same independent set, and different occurrences in a recursion need not use the same intermediate representation. We formalize this for Gao's binary product and derive explicit propagation rules showing how heterogeneous choices strengthen the resulting gadget while leaving its current code size unchanged, then extend the principle to the more general BPZ framework, tailoring constructions to the distinct roles they play within the recursion. Applying these refinements to the seven-cycle $C_7$, we obtain an independent set in $C_7^{\boxtimes 500}$ yielding $Θ(C_7)\ge 3.25883262\ldots$, improving the best known lower bound. Beyond the numerical gain, the results illustrate a general principle for recursive zero-error constructions: intermediate structures with the same dimension and current code size can have different downstream value depending on where and how they are used in the recursion.
Deepayan Sanyal, Joel Michelson, Carla E. Cao +2cs.AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has long been inspired by studies of biological intelligence. Reinforcement learning, for instance, drew inspiration from studies involving animal learning and is now a powerful paradigm for solving many real-world problems. Recently, plant biologists have uncovered a wide range of complex behaviors in plants that enable them to flexibly adapt to variable environments. Here, we argue that such behavior can motivate new AI frameworks encompassing a range of problems overlooked by existing problem-solving frameworks such as supervised learning, tree search, and constraint satisfaction. We illustrate this idea with two examples of intelligent problem-solving in plants: (1) leaf mimicry in Boquila trifoliolata, a vine capable of altering its leaves' morphology to resemble those of multiple host trees simultaneously; and (2) coordinated root-shoot growth, wherein plants allocate resources across organ systems exploring distinct environments. While leaf mimicry is highly specific to Boquila, coordination of root-shoot growth is shared across most plants. For both examples, we capture underlying computational principles and identify problems fitting these frameworks that are currently unaddressed by AI. Finally, we outline preliminary task formulations and discuss how these formulations may be applied to non-plant problems.
Classic Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) primarily focuses on the positive relationships between objects and attributes and does not have mechanisms for handling negation.To overcome this limitation, we introduce three types of negation concepts (contradictory negation, opposite negation, intermediary negation) into FCA.Based on the set SCOI and logic LCOI+PLCOI with these three types negation, we define formal context, Galois connection operators, formal concept and concept lattice with three types of negation,this leads to the proposal of a FCACOI: Formal Concept Analysis with contradictory negation, opposite negation and intermediary negation.For the reasoning in FCACOI, this paper focuses on attribute implication reasoning. Based on the logic LCOI+PLCOI and its semantics, we introduce the notion of ICOI-entailment as the semantic implication for attribute implication reasoning in FCACOI. Through ICOI-entailment, a connection is established between attribute implication reasoning in FCACOI and inference in the logic LCOI+PLCOI, it indicate that formally proven inference rules (theorems) in LCOI+PLCOI are valid in the attribute implication reasoning of FCACOI, LCOI+PLCOI provides a logical foundation for attribute implication reasoning in FCACOI. To illustrate the capability of attribute implication reasoning in FCACOI, we discuss its application in a concrete example. Moreover, we explore attribute reduction of the formal context in FCACOI, propose two research frameworks for attribute reduction from different perspectives, and compare their characteristics.We believe that, based on richer logic and semantics, FCACOI elevates FCA from a theory that describes affirmations to one that can describe affirmations and its contradiction(either this or that), opposition(extreme negation) and intermediary (transitional states between oppositions).