NeurIPS 2025 论文列表

Large language models (LLMs) have shown impressive capabilities across tasks such as mathematics, coding, and reasoning, yet their learning ability, which is crucial for adapting to dynamic environments and acquiring new knowledge, remains underexplored. In this work, we address this gap by introducing a framework inspired by cognitive psychology and education. Specifically, we decompose general learning ability into three distinct, complementary dimensions: *Learning from Instructor* (acquiring knowledge via explicit guidance), *Learning from Concept* (internalizing abstract structures and generalizing to new contexts), and *Learning from Experience* (adapting through accumulated exploration and feedback). We conduct a comprehensive empirical study across the three learning dimensions and identify several insightful findings, such as (i) interaction improves learning; (ii) conceptual understanding is scale-emergent and benefits larger models; and (iii) LLMs are effective few-shot learners but not many-shot learners. Based on our framework and empirical findings, we introduce a benchmark that provides a unified and realistic evaluation of LLMs' general learning abilities across three learning cognition dimensions. It enables diagnostic insights and supports evaluation and development of more adaptive and human-like models.

Learning from Label Proportions (LLP) is a weakly-supervised paradigm that uses bag-level label proportions to train instance-level classifiers, offering a practical alternative to costly instance-level annotation. However, the weak supervision makes effective training challenging, and existing methods often rely on pseudo-labeling, which introduces noise. To address this, we propose RLPL, a two-stage framework. In the first stage, we use unsupervised contrastive learning to pretrain the encoder and train an auxiliary classifier with bag-level supervision. In the second stage, we introduce an LLP-OTD mechanism to refine pseudo labels and split them into high- and low-confidence sets. These sets are then used in LLPMix to train the final classifier. Extensive experiments and ablation studies on multiple benchmarks demonstrate that RLPL achieves comparable state-of-the-art performance and effectively mitigates pseudo-label noise.

Biomedical research data portals are essential resources for scientific inquiry, and interactive exploratory visualizations are an integral component for querying such data repositories. Increasingly, machine learning is being integrated into visualization systems to create natural language interfaces where questions about data can be answered with visualizations, and follow-up questions can build on the previous state. This paper introduces a framework that takes abstract low-level questions about data and a visualization grammar specification that can answer such a question, reifies them with data entities and fields that meet certain constraints, and paraphrases the question language to produce the final collection of realized data-question-visualization triplets. Furthermore, we can link these foundational elements together to construct chains of queries, visualizations, and follow-up queries. We developed an open-source review interface for evaluating the results of these datasets. We applied this framework to five biomedical research data repositories, resulting in DQVis, a dataset of 1.08 million data-question-visualization triplets and 11.4 thousand two-step question samples. Five visualization experts provided feedback on the generated dataset through our review interface. We present a summary of their input and publish the full reviews as an additional resource alongside the dataset. The DQVis dataset and generation code are available at https://huggingface.co/datasets/HIDIVE/DQVis and https://github.com/hms-dbmi/DQVis-Generation.

Diffusion and flow matching models have significantly advanced media generation, yet their design space is well-explored, somewhat limiting further improvements. Concurrently, autoregressive (AR) models, particularly those generating continuous tokens, have emerged as a promising direction for unifying text and media generation, showing improved performance at scale. This paper introduces Transition Matching (TM), a novel discrete-time, continuous-state generative paradigm that unifies and advances both diffusion/flow models and continuous AR generation. TM decomposes complex generation tasks into simpler Markov transitions, allowing for expressive non-deterministic probability transition kernels and arbitrary non-continuous supervision processes, thereby unlocking new flexible design avenues. We explore these choices through three TM variants: (i) Difference Transition Matching (DTM), which generalizes flow matching to discrete-time by directly learning transition probabilities, yielding state-of-the-art image quality and text adherence. (ii) Autoregressive Transition Matching (ARTM) and (iii) Full History Transition Matching (FHTM) are partially and fully causal models, respectively, that generalize continuous AR methods. They achieve continuous causal AR generation quality comparable to non-causal approaches and potentially enable seamless integration with existing AR text generation techniques. Notably, FHTM is the first fully causal model to match or surpass the performance of flow-based methods on text-to-image task in continuous domains. We demonstrate these contributions through a rigorous large-scale comparison of TM variants and relevant baselines, maintaining a fixed architecture, training data, and hyperparameters.

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems typically assume static, distant illumination; however, many real-world scenarios, such as endoscopy, subterranean robotics, and search & rescue in collapsed environments, require agents to operate with a co-located light and camera in the absence of external lighting. In such cases, dynamic near-field lighting introduces strong, view-dependent shading that significantly degrades SLAM performance. We introduce Near-Field Lighting Bundle Adjustment Loss (NFL-BA) which explicitly models near-field lighting as a part of Bundle Adjustment loss and enables better performance for scenes captured with dynamic lighting. NFL-BA can be integrated into neural rendering-based SLAM systems with implicit or explicit scene representations. Our evaluations mainly focus on endoscopy procedure where SLAM can enable autonomous navigation, guidance to unsurveyed regions, blindspot detections, and 3D visualizations, which can significantly improve patient outcomes and endoscopy experience for both physicians and patients. Replacing Photometric Bundle Adjustment loss of SLAM systems with NFL-BA leads to significant improvement in camera tracking, 37% for MonoGS and 14% for EndoGSLAM, and leads to state-of-the-art camera tracking and mapping performance on the C3VD colonoscopy dataset. Further evaluation on indoor scenes captured with phone camera with flashlight turned on, also demonstrate significant improvement in SLAM performance due to NFL-BA.

Federated continual learning (FCL) aims to maintain the model's performance on old tasks (i.e., stability) while enhancing its ability to acquire knowledge from current tasks (i.e., plasticity). With the development of pre-trained models (PTMs), fine-tuning PTMs on clients has become a promising approach to leveraging their extensive knowledge in FCL. In this paper, we propose MultiFCL, a novel FCL framework that fine-tunes PTMs to adapt to FCL while preserving their strong generalization capabilities. Specifically, to ensure the stability, MultiFCL introduces lightweight adapters for task adaption, which are subsequently frozen to prevent catastrophic forgetting. Moreover, by utilizing the semantic features of old tasks, MultiFCL performs multi-modal initialization of new task class prototypes. To enhance the plasticity, MultiFCL employs a multi-expert training mechanism that integrates multi-scale feature learning with multi-teacher dynamic self-distillation. Through intra-client and inter-client expert communication, MultiFCL facilitates cross-task and cross-client knowledge fusion. Experimental results demonstrate that MultiFCL achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple datasets and settings, showcasing its effectiveness in FCL scenarios.

Spectral decomposition of linear operators plays a central role in many areas of machine learning and scientific computing. Recent work has explored training neural networks to approximate eigenfunctions of such operators, enabling scalable approaches to representation learning, dynamical systems, and partial differential equations (PDEs). In this paper, we revisit a classical optimization framework from the computational physics literature known as the *orbital minimization method* (OMM), originally proposed in the 1990s for solving eigenvalue problems in computational chemistry. We provide a simple linear-algebraic proof of the consistency of the OMM objective, and reveal connections between this method and several ideas that have appeared independently across different domains. Our primary goal is to justify its broader applicability in modern learning pipelines. We adapt this framework to train neural networks to decompose positive semidefinite operators, and demonstrate its practical advantages across a range of benchmark tasks. Our results highlight how revisiting classical numerical methods through the lens of modern theory and computation can provide not only a principled approach for deploying neural networks in numerical simulation, but also effective and scalable tools for machine learning.

Risk-averse total-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) offer a promising framework for modeling and solving undiscounted infinite-horizon objectives. Existing model-based algorithms for risk measures like the entropic risk measure (ERM) and entropic value-at-risk (EVaR) are effective in small problems, but require full access to transition probabilities. We propose a Q-learning algorithm to compute the optimal stationary policy for total-reward ERM and EVaR objectives with strong convergence and performance guarantees. The algorithm and its optimality are made possible by ERM's dynamic consistency and elicitability. Our numerical results on tabular domains demonstrate quick and reliable convergence of the proposed Q-learning algorithm to the optimal risk-averse value function.

Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) have emerged as a powerful frame- work for solving partial differential equations (PDEs). However, standard MLP- based PINNs often fail to converge when dealing with complex initial value problems, leading to solutions that violate causality and suffer from a spectral bias towards low-frequency components. To address these issues, we introduce NeuSA (Neuro-Spectral Architectures), a novel class of PINNs inspired by classi- cal spectral methods, designed to solve linear and nonlinear PDEs with variable coefficients. NeuSA learns a projection of the underlying PDE onto a spectral basis, leading to a finite-dimensional representation of the dynamics which is then integrated with an adapted Neural ODE (NODE). This allows us to overcome spectral bias, by leveraging the high-frequency components enabled by the spectral representation; to enforce causality, by inheriting the causal structure of NODEs, and to start training near the target solution, by means of an initialization scheme based on classical methods. We validate NeuSA on canonical benchmarks for lin- ear and nonlinear wave equations, demonstrating strong performance as compared to other architectures, with faster convergence, improved temporal consistency and superior predictive accuracy. Code and pretrained models are available in https://github.com/arthur-bizzi/neusa.

Large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (LVLMs) have driven the paradigm shift towards general-purpose foundation models. However, both of them are prone to hallucinations, which compromise their factual accuracy and reliability. While existing research primarily focuses on isolated textual- or visual-centric errors, a critical yet underexplored phenomenon persists in LVLMs: Even neither of textual- or visual centric errors occur, LVLMs often struggle with a new and subtle hallucination mode that arising from composition of them. In this paper, we define this issue as Simple Compositional Hallucination (SCHall). Through an preliminary analysis, we present two key findings: (1) visual abstraction fails under compositional questioning, and (2) visual inputs induce degradation in language processing, leading to hallucinations. To facilitate future research on this phenomenon, we introduce a custom benchmark, SCBench, and propose a novel VLR-distillation method, which serves as the first baseline to effectively mitigate SCHall. Furthermore, experiment results on publicly available benchmarks, including both hallucination-specific and general-purpose ones, demonstrate the effectiveness of our VLR-distillation method.

Scaling model size and training data has led to great advances in the performance of Large Language Models (LLMs). However, the diminishing returns of this approach necessitate alternative methods to improve model capabilities, particularly in tasks requiring advanced reasoning. Large reasoning models, which leverage long chain-of-thoughts, bring unprecedented breakthroughs in problem-solving capabilities but at a substantial deployment cost associated to longer generations. Reducing inference costs is crucial for the economic feasibility, user experience, and environmental sustainability of these models. In this work, we propose to train large reasoning models to reason efficiently. Our method incentivizes models to minimize unnecessary computational overhead while largely maintaining accuracy, thereby achieving substantial deployment efficiency gains. It enables the derivation of a family of reasoning models with varying efficiency levels, controlled via a single hyperparameter. Experiments on two open-weight large reasoning models demonstrate significant reductions in inference cost while preserving most of the accuracy.

The increasing energy demands and carbon footprint of large-scale AI require intelligent workload management in globally distributed data centers. Yet progress is limited by the absence of benchmarks that realistically capture the interplay of time-varying environmental factors (grid carbon intensity, electricity prices, weather), detailed data center physics (CPUs, GPUs, memory, HVAC energy), and geo-distributed network dynamics (latency and transmission costs). To bridge this gap, we present DCcluster-Opt: an open-source, high-fidelity simulation benchmark for sustainable, geo-temporal task scheduling. DCcluster-Opt combines curated real-world datasets, including AI workload traces, grid carbon intensity, electricity markets, weather across 20 global regions, cloud transmission costs, and empirical network delay parameters with physics-informed models of data center operations, enabling rigorous and reproducible research in sustainable computing. It presents a challenging scheduling problem where a top-level coordinating agent must dynamically reassign or defer tasks that arrive with resource and service-level agreement requirements across a configurable cluster of data centers to optimize multiple objectives. The environment also models advanced components such as heat recovery. A modular reward system enables an explicit study of trade-offs among carbon emissions, energy costs, service level agreements, and water use. It provides a Gymnasium API with baseline controllers, including reinforcement learning and rule-based strategies, to support reproducible ML research and a fair comparison of diverse algorithms. By offering a realistic, configurable, and accessible testbed, DCcluster-Opt accelerates the development and validation of next-generation sustainable computing solutions for geo-distributed data centers.

Polyak–Ruppert averaging is a widely used technique to achieve the optimal asymptotic variance of stochastic approximation (SA) algorithms, yet its high-probability performance guarantees remain underexplored in general settings. In this paper, we present a general framework for establishing non-asymptotic concentration bounds for the error of averaged SA iterates. Our approach assumes access to individual concentration bounds for the unaveraged iterates and yields a sharp bound on the averaged iterates. We also construct an example, showing the tightness of our result up to constant multiplicative factors. As direct applications, we derive tight concentration bounds for contractive SA algorithms and for algorithms such as temporal difference learning and $Q$-learning with averaging, obtaining new bounds in settings where traditional analysis is challenging.

It is observed that the confidence score may fail to reflect the predicting quality accurately in previous proposal-based line segment detection methods, since the scores and the line locations are predicted simultaneously. We find that the line segment detection performance can be further improved by learning-based line candidate ranking and optimizing strategy. To this end, we build a novel end-to-end line detecting model named RANK++LETR upon deformable DETR architecture, where the encoder is used to select the line candidates while the decoder is applied to rank and optimize these candidates. We design line-aware deformable attention (LADA) module in which attention positions are distributed in a long narrow area and can align well with the elongated geometry of line segments. Moreover, we innovatively apply ranking-based supervision in line segment detection task with the design of contiguous labels according to the detection quality. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms previous SOTA methods in prediction accuracy and gets faster inferring speed than other Transformer-based methods.

3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has recently emerged as a fast, high-quality method for novel view synthesis (NVS). However, its use of low-degree spherical harmonics limits its ability to capture spatially varying color and view-dependent effects such as specular highlights. Existing works augment Gaussians with either a global texture map, which struggles with complex scenes, or per-Gaussian texture maps, which introduces high storage overhead. We propose Image-Based Gaussian Splatting, an efficient alternative that leverages high-resolution source images for fine details and view-specific color modeling. Specifically, we model each pixel color as a combination of a base color from standard 3DGS rendering and a learned residual inferred from neighboring training images. This promotes accurate surface alignment and enables rendering images of high-frequency details and accurate view-dependent effects. Experiments on standard NVS benchmarks show that our method significantly outperforms prior Gaussian Splatting approaches in rendering quality, without increasing the storage footprint.

In recent times, the standard practice for developing MLLMs is to feed features from vision encoder(s) into the LLM and train with natural language supervision. This approach often causes models to lean towards language comprehension and undermine the rich visual perception signals present in the data, which are critical for tasks involving spatial reasoning in the domain of embodied AI and robotics. Is it possible to optimize both at the same time? In this work, we propose VisPer-LM, the first approach that infuses visual perception knowledge from expert vision encoders into the LLM's (of an MLLM) hidden representations. We start by investigating MLLMs trained solely with natural language supervision and identify a positive correlation between the quality of visual representations within these models and their downstream performance. Given this insight, we formulate the objective during the pretraining stage in MLLMs as a coupled optimization of predictive visual embedding and next (text) token prediction. Moreover, through extensive probing, we observe improved visual representation quality due to embedding optimization, underscoring the effectiveness of our probing setup. We demonstrate that our VisPer-LM outperforms the single and multi-encoder baselines, proving our approach's superiority over explicitly feeding the corresponding features to the LLM. In particular, VisPer-LM boosts performance by an average margin of up to 2.5% on various benchmarks, with a notable improvement of 8.7% on the Depth task in CV-Bench.

A multi-agent system (MAS) enhances its capacity to solve complex natural language processing (NLP) tasks through collaboration among multiple agents, where consensus-seeking serves as a fundamental mechanism. However, existing consensus-seeking approaches typically rely on voting mechanisms to judge consensus, overlooking contradictions in system-internal beliefs that destabilize the consensus. Moreover, these methods often involve agents updating their results through indiscriminate collaboration with every other agent. Such uniform interaction fails to identify the optimal collaborators for each agent, hindering the emergence of a stable consensus. To address these challenges, we provide a theoretical framework for selecting optimal collaborators that maximize consensus stability. Based on the theorems, we propose the Belief-Calibrated Consensus Seeking (BCCS) framework to facilitate stable consensus via selecting optimal collaborators and calibrating the consensus judgment by system-internal beliefs. Experimental results on the MATH and MMLU benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed BCCS framework outperforms the best existing results by 2.23\% and 3.95\% of accuracy on challenging tasks, respectively. Our code and data are available at https://github.com/dengwentao99/BCCS.

Visual reasoning in multimodal large language models (MLLMs) has primarily been studied in passive, static settings, limiting their effectiveness in real-world physical environments where an embodied agent must contend with incomplete information due to occlusion or a limited field of view. Humans, in contrast, leverage their embodiment to actively explore and interact with their environment—moving, examining, and manipulating objects—to gather information through a closed-loop process integrating perception, reasoning, and action. Inspired by this capability, we introduce the Active Visual Reasoning (AVR) task, extending visual reasoning to a paradigm of embodied interaction in partially observable environments. AVR necessitates embodied agents to: (1) actively acquire information via sequential physical actions, (2) integrate observations across multiple steps for coherent reasoning, and (3) dynamically adjust decisions based on evolving visual feedback. To rigorously evaluate AVR, we introduce CLEVR-AVR, a simulation benchmark featuring multi-round interactive environments designed to assess both reasoning correctness and information-gathering efficiency. We present AVR-152k, a large-scale dataset that offers rich Chain-of-Thought (CoT) annotations detailing iterative reasoning for uncertainty identification, action-conditioned information gain prediction, and information-maximizing action selection, crucial for training agents in a higher-order Markov Decision Process. Building on this, we develop PhysVLM-AVR, an embodied MLLM achieving state-of-the-art performance on CLEVR-AVR, embodied reasoning (OpenEQA, RoboVQA), and passive visual reasoning (GeoMath, Geometry30K). Our analysis also reveals that current embodied MLLMs, despite detecting information incompleteness, struggle to actively acquire and integrate new information through interaction, highlighting a fundamental gap in active reasoning capabilities.

People have diverse privacy requirements. This is best modeled using a personalized local differential privacy model where each user privatizes their data using a possibly different privacy parameter. While the model of personalized local differential privacy is a natural and important one, prior work has failed to give meaningful error bounds. In this paper, we study the foundational sum/mean estimation problem under this model. We present two novel protocols that achieve strong error guarantees. The first gives a guarantee based on the radius of the data, suiting inputs that are centered around zero. The second extends the guarantee to the diameter of the data, capturing the case when the points are situated arbitrarily. Experimental results on both synthetic and real data show that our protocols significantly outperform existing methods in terms of accuracy while providing a strong level of privacy.