#01Oct 29, 2026
cs.AI
Collaborative AI agents for autonomous experimental research with solid-state quantum spins
El Mustapha Mansouri, Eikichi Kimura, Masato Koga and 1 more
An autonomous research laboratory could conduct an entire study, from formulating questions to preparing manuscripts. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers one route towards this goal. Recent AI systems take on several research roles, but may draw conclusions that the evidence does not support. Here, we present an autonomous research laboratory in which agents based on large language models assess one another's work and can stop or redirect investigations. They can generate and reject research questions, require separate theoretical checks and conduct experiments designed to challenge their claims. We demonstrate these capabilities by investigating ensembles of quantum spins in diamond. The agents derived the minimum number of calibration settings needed to predict responses to a defined family of microwave pulse sequences. They checked the result computationally and designed experiments to distinguish competing predictions. An initial experiment agreed with the theoretical predictions, but repeated reference measurements showed that the signal was drifting during data collection. The agents therefore treated the result as inconclusive and revised the measurement protocol without relaxing the acceptance criteria. The revised experiment met those criteria and supported the theoretical predictions. This study demonstrates that collaborating AI agents can select research questions, derive theoretical results and test their predictions experimentally.
#02Oct 29, 2026
physics.ao-ph
From extreme weather to agricultural consequences with agentic AI
Minghan Yu, Mengyu Dai, Yixin Wen and 1 more
Extreme weather is forecast days ahead, yet its consequences for agriculture remain hard to predict: a forecast says where a storm will strike, not which crops will suffer or how much is at risk, and the records that could tell span many sources. We present WxCrop, the first agent that judges agricultural hazards from physically interpretable weather indices examined by causal analysis, and the first that combines weather and agricultural information to predict crop loss reliably for past and forecast dates. We demonstrate it in Florida on hurricanes, freezes and dry heat, with a loss model calibrated on insurance records for each, and the same procedure extends to other hazards and areas. Three checks show reliability: the hurricane index detects recorded cyclone days with an AUC of 0.98, recorded losses in held-out years are reproduced to within 2%, and independent production records confirm the county rankings (rank correlation 0.63). Users ask the agent for each crop group's loss as a fraction of expected season value, every number sourced, so that governments, growers and scientists respond to agricultural disasters quickly.
#03Oct 29, 2026
cs.AI
Ramanujan Challenge Results: AI-Assisted Evaluation Pipeline for Multi-Format Proofs
Alan Sorani, Ashvni Narayanan, Michael Shalyt and 8 more
As AI's mathematical capabilities rapidly improve, meaningful benchmarks are shifting from university-level problems and math olympiads to research-level mathematics. The Ramanujan Challenge is a benchmark comprised of research-level problems in number theory, including unpublished results and open conjectures. It presented concrete formulas for mathematical constants whose correctness can be checked numerically, while their proofs may require non-obvious mathematics. Here, we analyze the Challenge submissions, measuring the relative success of different AI models, Computer Algebra Systems (CAS), and formal tools. We find correct submissions that are conceptually distinct from the official solutions, and a proof of one of the published open conjectures. Evaluating the submissions exposed a second challenge: judging complex proofs reliably at scale. We introduce an AI-assisted evaluation pipeline for natural language proofs, CAS code, and Lean formalizations that assesses semantic and logical correctness. Compared with the conventional one-shot LLM judgment, our pipeline reduces false-positive verdicts on natural language proofs from 23% to 6% and improves judgment accuracy on supporting code from 46% to 58%. This approach provides a methodology for evaluating research-level mathematics at scale, with potential applications across mathematics and AI for science.
#04Oct 29, 2026
eess.SY
Adaptive Scenario Generation for KL-DRO Around a Learned Density Model
Aron Brenner, Saurabh Amin
Distributionally robust optimization (DRO) hedges data-driven two-stage stochastic programs against error in the distribution estimated from a finite record, and standard ambiguity sets differ in how they treat realizations absent from that record. A divergence ball around the empirical distribution contains only reweightings of the record, whereas a transport ball also contains distributions supported off the record, including on realizations the data-generating process cannot produce, against which the decision is then hedged as well. We instead propose a Kullback-Leibler (KL) ball centered at a density model fitted to the record, the learned nominal, which lets the adversary up-weight costly unobserved realizations in proportion to the probability the model assigns them. Solving the resulting problem poses a second difficulty, because it can accommodate only a few scenarios, and an independent sample of that size is likely to omit the rare realizations on which the worst case concentrates. We therefore build the scenario set adaptively, alternating between solving the finite problem and drawing new realizations from the learned nominal, steered toward the worst case at the current decision, with importance weights that correct the draws back to the model. On a multi-item newsvendor problem and a capacity expansion problem on realistic grid data, centering the ball at the learned nominal rather than at the record lowers cost under distribution shift, at comparable in-distribution cost, when the record is scarce and the model class captures structure that lets it extrapolate beyond the record. The advantage fades as the record grows or as the shift departs from the structure the model has learned.
#05Oct 29, 2026
cs.CL
Homebrewed SLMs: Autoregressive and Masked Diffusion Language Models Built at Home for Portuguese
Pedro Carvalho Brom
Building a language model of one's own no longer requires a data centre. This tutorial trains one from scratch, tokenizer included, on one consumer GPU, and shows how to tell whether it is good for the tasks of a specialist domain. It proposes no new method. It releases a tested Python package and two notebooks in Brazilian Portuguese with autoregressive and masked diffusion generation on one network, a preregistered comparison protocol, legal tasks built from text alone with a Kneser-Ney floor and public yardsticks, reference numbers for models of 11 to 12M parameters, and a catalogue of defects that only measurement revealed. On Brazilian prose and federal laws, at minutes per run, the autoregressive mode peaks at 64 epochs over the same text and then memorises it, while masked diffusion improves up to 256. At their best points on test, the diffusion bound exceeds the autoregressive likelihood by 0.06 bits per byte, within the preregistered minimum effect. On held-out laws and on acts published after training, the model ties a 6-gram floor in likelihood on the same windows, and it loses to the floor at continuing those acts. It beats the floor at detecting tampered text, and fills cross-references more often than the floor and public models of 160M and 630M parameters, only in decrees, a genre absent from training, where those scorers stay near or below chance, and in filling the blank only when each group weighs the same, since per item it ties the 630M model. On laws, the public models, trained with about 5x10^2 to 10^5 times its compute, lead in tampered text and continuation. The blind human reading is preregistered and not part of this version.