#01Nov 10, 2026
cs.CL
Mechanistic Interpretability Needs a Logic of Inference
Zhimin Hu, Chen Jiang, Hanbo Xie and 2 more
Neural networks are increasingly studied not merely as predictive systems, but as complex systems whose internal computations are themselves objects of scientific inquiry. Recent progress in mechanistic interpretability (MI) has made it possible to identify neurons, features, circuits, population structures, and dynamical patterns associated with model behavior. As these tools improve, attention is shifting from what can be observed inside a model to how those observations support mechanistic explanations. We examine the parallel efforts of neuroscience and MI to address this question and identify recurring inferential bottlenecks when inferring mechanisms from complex neural systems. We propose five principles and organize them into a recursive logic for a more rigorous procedure of mechanistic inference. These principles provide a framework that supports scientific discovery in two senses: it helps turn local interpretability findings into cumulative knowledge of mechanisms within models, and it makes those mechanisms sufficiently precise to generate testable hypotheses about domains beyond the models. Evidence beyond MI is ultimately required to establish what model mechanisms reveal about the world.
#02Nov 10, 2026
cs.LG
When Does the Real Wiring Win? Testing connectome structure-function claims against unmeasured physiology
Yeyuan Liu
Connectome-constrained models are often used to argue that a measured wiring diagram outperforms shuffled or rewired wiring, and hence that structure shapes function. Such comparisons can confound wiring with how the models are tuned: a connectome fixes who connects to whom, not the excitability, gains or plasticity rates the model also needs, and modellers often tune these until the real-wiring model works. We separate three estimands: physiology tuned on the real wiring and transferred to nulls (P1), each wiring tuned on its own (P2), and P2 restricted to physiology consistent with independent data (P3). The biases involved are known in machine learning (under-tuned baselines, inherited weights, winner's curse); we measure what they do to biological conclusions, using synthetic ground truth, placebo nulls and three Drosophila circuit models. Some claims survive every protocol we test: segregated reward and punishment dopamine improves learning, and head-direction topography is required for a persistent bump. Others do not. In the mushroom body, the real Kenyon-cell output wiring beats a cross-subtype identity shuffle by 0.09 under P1 and P2 but loses to it by 0.09 under P3 (95% CIs exclude zero; held-out runs confirm). The verdict is set by the share of alpha'beta' cells among active Kenyon cells, which P1 selects low; at the share implied by imaging (about 44%) the real-wiring model fails to learn, exposing a model inadequacy rather than a deficit of the fly's wiring. In flyvis, P1 penalises a mirrored connectome, which has a constructed solution within 0.07 (median) of the real error, more than a spatially shuffled one in 50 of 50 members; the ranking survives ten-fold longer retraining but depends on the checkpoint at fifty-fold. A credible structural claim needs matched optimisation, data-constrained physiology and a model that still works there.
#03Nov 10, 2026
cs.CL
Pterodactyl: Pushing the Limits of Efficient Automated Translation Evaluation
Evelyn Y. Garland, Carola F. Berger
In this paper, we present 1020 Group's submission to the WMT26 shared task on automated quality evaluation. Our system, Pterodactyl, was engineered specifically for subtasks 2 and 3, that is, segment-level quality score prediction and the detection of error-free segments. Pterodactyl is a highly customizable, ultra-low cost system optimized for binary classification in translation triage and data curation. It is based on an LLM-as-a-judge approach, with prompt engineering and model selection guided by ROC analysis. We also developed several variants of Pterodactyl that were specifically adapted for subtasks 3.
#04Nov 10, 2026
cs.CV
Toward Foundation Detection Models via Example-Based Grounding in EM-DETR
Sheethal Bhat, Bogdan Georgescu, Awais Mansoor and 3 more
DeepLearning (DL)-based Computer-Aided Diagnostic (CAD) systems have shown great promise in supporting clinicians, but their performance heavily depends on the availability of large, well-annotated datasets. In medical lesion detection, the scarcity of comprehensive, stan dardized annotations and the heterogeneity of existing datasets limit the development of robust foundation models. In this work, we introduce a novel approach to building a multi-domain foundation model for le sion detection by integrating diverse medical image datasets annotated for both anatomical structures and abnormalities. We first propose a student-teacher training strategy to effectively combine datasets with heterogeneous label spaces, mitigating catastrophic forgetting, and im proving feature learning. In addition, building on our previously pro posed example-based EM-DETR framework, we adapt it to jointly learn from multiple domain-specific datasets, enabling fine-grained, example driven detection across modalities. Our model achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) results, with image-level AUC scores exceeding previous SOTA by 1% point on four key findings in CXRs. We achieve a leading mAP50 in CXRs and mammography, surpassing EM-DETR trained on a single dataset by 2-3% points. This approach paves the way for scalable foundation models in medical imaging that leverage heterogeneous data while maintaining robust and generalizable performance.
#05Nov 10, 2026
cs.AI
Comparative Analysis of Agent Evaluation Frameworks: Stability, Detection, and Discovery in Enterprise Analytics Agents
Howard Zhang, Chuck Arvin, Logan Brown and 3 more
Deploying LLM-based analytics agents in enterprise settings requires evaluation frameworks that can reliably detect failures across complex, multi-tool workflows. We present a three-phase comparative study of three evaluation frameworks, each representing a distinct evaluation paradigm (trace-based LLM judging, text-only LLM judging with red-teaming, and deterministic heuristics), applied to two analytics agents in a controlled research setting using frozen execution traces. Phase 1 quantifies evaluation harness stability through repeated measurements, finding that 97% of configurations meet the stability threshold and that stability patterns are agent-independent. Phase 2 measures known risk detection on 72 ground-truth test cases, where the trace-based framework achieves the best precision-recall balance (F1=0.90) while text-only evaluation matches on recall but generates 5x more false alarms. Phase 3 evaluates unknown risk discovery, uncovering 24 novel failures with zero overlap between functional testing and security red-teaming. Our results demonstrate that (1) the information available to the evaluation harness determines evaluation quality, (2) functional and security evaluation are complementary, and (3) LLM-based evaluation harnesses surface subtle errors that human reviewers miss. We recommend a two-framework strategy: trace-based evaluation for functional assessment and adversarial red-teaming for security validation.