#01Nov 4, 2026
cs.AI
Learning to Decode Linear Codes with Generalized Belief Propagation Network
Samira Malek
Error correcting codes are a fundamental component of communication systems, enabling reliable data transmission over noisy channels. Recently, neural decoders have demonstrated notable performance gains over classical iterative algorithms. In this paper, we propose a Generalized Belief Propagation Network (GBPNet) that preserves message-passing symmetry while enhancing the decoder's learning capability. The architecture uses cascaded variable-node updates and learned element-wise message scaling while retaining the Tanner graph structure. We also introduce two training strategies, progressive training and high-SNR training, that improve decoding accuracy. Experimental results on several linear codes show that GBPNet achieves lower bit error rates than conventional belief propagation and the evaluated state-of-the-art neural decoders.
#02Nov 4, 2026
cs.AI
Dull, Dirty, Dangerous? Working Conditions and the Limits of Occupational AI Exposure
Siyi Yu
Automation is often justified as relief from dull, dirty, and dangerous work. I examine how these conditions relate to occupational AI exposure using 21 O*NET items across 754 US occupations. Higher exposure is associated with lower condition scores under a large language model (LLM) measure and AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE), with equal occupation weights and employment weights. Adjustment for physical demands, required education, training and experience, and wages reduces the composite association. The adjusted confidence intervals include zero for LLM exposure and remain below zero for AIOE. Separating repetition from restricted discretion also changes what the combined Dull score conveys. These comparisons show how item groupings and occupational characteristics shape the interpretation of exposure estimates. Occupational profiles offer a starting point for selecting contrasting research settings. Establishing desired automation or realized relief requires evidence about workers' preferences and specific interventions.
#03Nov 4, 2026
cs.LG
Navigating Disagreement Among Criteria for Evaluating Explanation Faithfulness
Grant Shanklin, Jiří Němeček, Asia Biega
Faithfulness requires that algorithmic explanations accurately reflect the model's behavior. Yet existing operationalizations of faithfulness can disagree about whether the same explanation is faithful, leaving developers and auditors to choose among conflicting evaluations. In this paper, we investigate disagreement among evaluation criteria and offer a practical path forward for evaluating explanation faithfulness. We first identify how operationalizations of faithfulness differ. We introduce a faithfulness functional that locates their disagreements in what an explanation claims about the model, which comparisons bear on that claim, and how agreement across those comparisons should be aggregated, and we reconstruct existing evaluation criteria within it. We argue these reconstructions support understanding faithfulness as a common though incompletely specified relation between the model and explanation, so the differences reflect choices left open by the general requirement. Justifying an operationalization then comes down to justifying these choices, which, on our view, draws on explanatory, institutional, and normative considerations. We support this argument with a case study of adverse action notices, reconstructing the evaluation implicit in an industry-proposed procedure and identifying which of its choices the setting justifies and which remain open. Our work gives auditors and practitioners a way to navigate disagreeing evaluations of faithfulness. It also explains why the literature should expect multiple operationalizations, while showing how concrete settings can narrow the choice among them. More broadly, our analysis shows how a shared requirement of faithfulness can support contextually justified evaluations despite disagreement among existing metrics.
#04Nov 4, 2026
cs.MA
A Framework for Context Enrichment and Selective Robustness in LLM Social Agents
Mattia Greiche, Reihaneh Rabbany, Maximilian Puelma Touzel
Researchers use large language models as agents in social simulations, where agents are prompted with observations and background information intended to shape their actions. Yet LLM agents have been shown to substantially change their behavior under meaning-preserving prompt variations, creating a validation problem for social simulation. One plausible hypothesis is that this brittleness reflects a lack of grounding and can be reduced by enriching the context provided to the agents. Whether richer context improves robustness remains unclear, in part because context richness and robustness are rarely defined in ways that support controlled comparisons. We address the first need with controlled context enrichment, a set of prompt substitution rules that systematically enriches distinct types of context: neutral padding, generic social background, descriptive decision grounding, and normative decision grounding. We address the second by introducing selective robustness as a validation criterion: insensitivity to meaning-preserving prompt variation combined with a directional response to decision-relevant changes in the social world. We demonstrate the framework in a Prisoner's Dilemma-like game, showing how it can be used to identify which forms of context enrichment produce more desirable and robust agent behavior. We find that these forms of enrichment produce distinct behavioral patterns that vary between the two models tested.
#05Nov 4, 2026
cs.CL
SpecCompact: Accelerating LLM Agent Context Compaction with Slot-Parallel Semantic Speculative Verification
Yulu An, Yifei Feng, Xiangyang Yin
LLM agents use context compaction to manage growing interaction histories, but summarizing long histories with large models can introduce substantial delays. Compaction therefore requires balancing information retention against latency. We observe that structured summary slots can retain information when generated independently. Based on this observation, we present SpecCompact, a framework that accelerates compaction through slot-parallel semantic speculation. SpecCompact fine-tunes a small drafter and generates slots in parallel. The target model verifies each proposed line and repairs rejected content, while subsequent drafting uses the updated slot prefix. System optimizations further reduce repeated context processing and model calls. Across AppWorld and $τ^3$ benchmarks with two target models, SpecCompact achieves $2.04$--$5.63\times$ compaction speedups over Hermes-style summarization. Separate downstream evaluations reveal model- and task-dependent performance trade-offs. A user study within Hermes further shows an $8.68\times$ median compaction speedup.