Diffusion and flow-based models have become the de facto approaches for generating continuous data, e.g., in domains such as images and videos. Their success has attracted growing interest in applying them to language modeling. Unlike their image-domain counterparts, today's leading diffusion language models (DLMs) pri...
\emph{Kullback-Leibler} (KL) regularization is ubiquitous in reinforcement learning algorithms in the form of \emph{reverse} or \emph{forward} KL. Recent studies have demonstrated $\epsilon^{-1}$-type fast rates for decision making under reverse KL regularization, in contrast to the standard $\epsilon^{-2}$-type sample...
Qingyue Zhao, Kaixuan Ji, Heyang Zhao et al.· 0 citations
Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) reparameterizes a weight matrix $W$ as a product of two low-rank factors, but the Jacobian $J_G$ of the generator mapping the factors to the weight matrix is rank-deficient, so the factor-space preconditioner $J_G^* F_t J_G$ induced by any $W$-space preconditioner $F_t$ is singular, and conse...
Self-distillation (SD) offers a promising path for adapting large language models (LLMs) without relying on stronger external teachers. However, SD in autoregressive LLMs remains challenging because self-generated trajectories are free-form, correctness is task-dependent, and plausible rationales can still provide unst...
Yiqiao Jin, Yiyang Wang, Lucheng Fu et al.· 0 citations
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Most discrete visual tokenizers rely on a default design: every position in the sequence shares the same codebook. Such a constant-codebook design can consume the finite-data entropy budget very quickly. We observe that the per-position empirical conditional entropy decays so quickly along the sequence that, after a fe...
Bowen Zheng, Weijian Luo, Guang Yang et al.· 0 citations
Chain-of-thought (CoT) supervision makes computationally hard learning problems tractable by exposing intermediate steps that are easy to learn via next-token prediction. However, in practice, CoT datasets draw on heterogeneous sources with different reasoning styles, and substantial effort goes into curating supervisi...
Nirmit Joshi, Roey Magen, Nathan Srebro et al.· 0 citations
While Diffusion Large Language Models (dLLMs) offer structural advantages for global planning, efficiently verifying that they arrive at correct answers via valid reasoning traces remains a critical challenge. In this work, we propose a geometric perspective: Reasoning on the Manifold. We hypothesize that valid generat...
Jiaoyang Ruan, Xin Gao, Yinda Chen et al.· 0 citations
Looped transformers promise test-time compute scaling by spending more iterations on harder problems, but it remains unclear which architectural choices let them extrapolate to harder problems at test time rather than memorize training-specific solutions. We introduce a fixed-point based framework for analyzing looped...
The Forward-Forward (FF) algorithm trains networks layer-by-layer using a local "goodness function," yet the choice of activity statistic remains an important design question. We systematically study how selectivity and activity shape affect FF learning, introducing selective goodness functions based on top-$k$ and ent...
Talha Ruzgar Akkus, Suayp Talha Kocabay, Kamer Ali Yuksel et al.· 0 citations
We show that robustness to post-training quantization (PTQ) is a transferable direction in weight space. We call this direction the quantization vector: extracted from a donor task by simple weight-space arithmetic, it can be used to patch a receiver model and improve PTQ Top-1 accuracy by up to 60% in a 3-bit setting,...
Daniele Solombrino, Antonio Andrea Gargiulo, Alessandro Zirilli et al.· 0 citations
Explainable AI (XAI) methods are commonly evaluated using functional correctness metrics, also called faithfulness or fidelity, which estimate how closely an explanation reflects the model's reasoning. Higher correctness is assumed to produce better human understanding, but this link has not been tested with controlled...
Gregor Baer, Chao Zhang, Isel Grau et al.· 0 citations
Tactile vision-language-action models (VLAs) and tactile world-action models (WAMs) are a promising new paradigm for contact-rich manipulation, but existing models either underutilize touch, rely on large-scale tactile pretraining, or incur high inference latency due to iterative video generation. We present VTAM, an e...
Haoran Yuan, Weigang Yi, Zhenyu Zhang et al.· 0 citations
Research Manager Mike Walker reflects on a career spanning hacker culture, cybersecurity, and AI, sharing lessons about trust, teamwork, leadership, and why solving difficult problems requires curiosity, judgment, agility—and an understanding of the rules. The post Learn the rules: The hacker mindset appeared first on Microsoft Research.
Learn how Google Antigravity and our Cheminformatics Skills accelerate drug discovery workflows, search compounds, and propose novel rigidified macrocycles.
MIT News · Artificial Intelligence· news.mit.eduOct 28, 2026
Professor Paris Smaragdis develops computers with superhuman hearing for applications like speech recognition, music understanding, and environmental monitoring.
MIT News · Artificial Intelligence· news.mit.eduOct 27, 2026
Prabha Jha used her experience with MIT Open Learning’s program for senior executives to develop AI solutions for her employer, Verizon, and to write a book.