#01Nov 9, 2026
cs.AI
LogCDM: Interpretable Log Anomaly Detection via Behavioral Graph Drift and Adaptive Signal Fusion
Suryansh Talukdar, Taha Sarwat, Jin Soung Yoo
Log-based anomaly detection is increasingly dominated by large pretrained models, from BERT-scale encoders to 8B-parameter language models, which require GPUs at inference time and are difficult to deploy on the monitoring nodes where logs are produced. We present LogCDM, a compact detector that scores each log session using three complementary signals: the next-event surprise of a small causal Transformer, the distance between a graph-attention embedding of the session's own transition graph and that of a normal reference graph, and a transition-drift statistic that we show is exactly a frequency-weighted chi-squared divergence between transition kernels. The divergence view yields an asymptotic null distribution, a length-standardized score, and a per-edge decomposition that explains each alarm. A sigmoid gate fuses the three signals; under a shared-covariance Gaussian model, this gate is the Bayes posterior, and its learned weights indicate which signal each dataset relies on. With 8.1-8.8M parameters and no GPU required at inference, LogCDM reaches F1 scores of 0.984 on HDFS, 0.870 on chronologically split BGL, and 0.850 on Thunderbird, within 0.013-0.12 of an 8.1B-parameter LLM detector evaluated under the same protocol and above all compact baselines on BGL. It scores a session in 5.5-10.5 ms on a CPU. Ablations show that the structural signals add 0.025-0.030 F1 on BGL and Thunderbird but almost nothing on HDFS, consistent with the learned fusion weights.
#02Nov 9, 2026
cs.LG
Where Does Alignment Emerge and What Does It Mean? A Closer Look at the Platonic Representation Hypothesis
Julia Herbst, Simon Roschmann, Quentin Bouniot and 1 more
The Platonic Representation Hypothesis (PRH) suggests that neural networks are converging toward similar representation spaces. As language models become more capable, their representations are aligning with those of vision models. However, recent work has questioned whether this trend continues to hold for newer language models. Moreover, it has been shown that representation similarity metrics can be confounded by model depth and width, requiring appropriate baselines for interpretation. In this work, we first investigate where alignment emerges between unimodal models across model layers and representation dimensions. Next, we find that the PRH capability-alignment trend persists for newer models as long as the captions are sufficiently clean and informative. Finally, we contextualize cross-modal alignment, introducing unimodal and multimodal baselines on various datasets. Our results show that the cross-modal representational alignment of unimodal models can surpass that of explicitly aligned vision-language models, but remains substantially behind the alignment observed for models of the same modality. Code is available at https://github.com/ExplainableML/prh-closer-look.
#03Nov 9, 2026
cs.CL
The Narrative Gap: Can LLMs Help Us Navigate Diverse Narratives Across Languages?
Nikhil Sharma, Kelly Marchisio, Kenton Murray and 1 more
Large language models (LLMs) increasingly mediate how people seek and consume information, including accounts that differ across languages and regions, especially on contested topics. Supporting diverse information seeking requires models to help users navigate competing narratives across languages and information streams. We define six capabilities necessary for diverse multilingual information seeking: three foundational capabilities for narrative inclusion, narrative exclusion, and missing narrative identification; and three higher-level capabilities for presenting diverse narratives, preserving narrative coverage under confirmatory queries, and maintaining information parity across languages. To guide the development of those information seeking capabilities, we introduce \textsc{NarrativeBench}, a benchmark comprising 1,333 news articles in 23 publication languages across 23 contested topics and 460 Reddit-grounded queries. Evaluating 14 LLMs across 24 query languages, we find that current models lack the capabilities needed to reliably navigate diverse narratives, limiting users' control over the perspectives they receive and leaving substantial gaps in exposure to competing accounts even when diversity is explicitly requested. Information access also differs across query framings and languages, risking echo chambers, linguistic filter bubbles, and information disparities that weaken the common ground needed for democratic discourse. \textsc{NarrativeBench} provides a foundation for developing information systems that give users across languages and regions agency to navigate diverse narratives.
#04Nov 9, 2026
cs.HC
Programming Prescience: Issues in Human Construction of Forecasting Bots
Priya Dhawka, Benjamin Wilson, Andrew Head
AI models' growing capacity for complex reasoning has made them attractive tools for forecasting, or the systematic prediction of the future based on past and present data. However, should AI forecasting systems be adopted, human builders will shoulder the work of building and evaluating them. In this paper, we explore what this work looks like with a qualitative interview study with 15 builders of forecasting bots, sampled from among successful participants in a recent AI forecasting competition. Our analysis surfaces the challenges around (1) tuning a bot to acquire factual research, (2) implementing coherent reasoning, and (3) understanding how well one's bot actually does. During their work, builders frequently introduced complexity that did not pay off, and tested in ways that were opportunistic and piecemeal. Our detailed account of their challenges helps clarify what problems should be targeted in upcoming innovations in process, tools, and human-AI teaming for forecasting.
#05Nov 9, 2026
cs.LG
What the Loss Curve Misses: FP4 Pretraining Slows the Acquisition of Rare Facts
Chang Lu, Mengjiao Zhang
Low-precision pretraining is usually judged by validation loss. We ask whether matching loss also means learning rare facts as efficiently. We train transformers from scratch with emulated 4-bit matrix multiplications on synthetic biographies with controlled exposure counts, on their own and mixed into web text. NVFP4 needs 1.32$\times$ and 1.52$\times$ as many exposures as BF16 to match its recall while validation loss differs by only 0.5% and 2%, and 1.26$\times$ and 1.30$\times$ when both models are evaluated with BF16 matrix multiplications. Under our primary readout, the exposure cost is about 1.2$\times$ at matched loss. Zero-mean gradient noise reproduces the cost of quantizing only the backward pass, which barely moves the loss. In a controlled experiment at twice the NVFP4 error, noise fed only to Adam's second-moment estimate acts like a lower learning rate and its cost fades, whereas noise in the update lowers its signal-to-noise ratio and carries about two thirds of the cost through the end of training. Raising the learning rate to offset the smaller average step does not recover the cost, either for this noise or for NVFP4. Gradient statistics of BF16 checkpoints rank the costs of formats, partial quantizations and noise controls without fitting (Spearman 0.96). We suggest measuring rare-fact acquisition alongside loss when evaluating low-precision recipes.