arXiv Machine Learning

Predictive Objectives Discard Exogenous Control-Relevant Features: A Controlled Mechanistic Study

arXiv:2606. 30068v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Joint-embedding predictive (JEPA-style) objectives learn representations by predicting future latents.

arXiv AI
Sep 10

Environments as Scaffold: Enriching Feedback to Bootstrap Self-Evolving Agents in Long-Horizon Tasks

The paper introduces Feedback‑Enriched Environments (FEEs) as a new approach to training large language models as autonomous agents for long‑horizon tasks. By shifting from action guidance to observation enrichment during later stages of exploration, FEEs improve performance across SciWorld and BFCL benchmarks with various Qwen3 model scales and RL algorithms. The study shows that FEEs stabilize training, promote proactive exploration, embed environmental guidance into policy weights, and highlight intra‑group feedback consistency as key for stable optimization.

By Hongbang Yuan, Zhuoran Jin, Yixin Cao
arXiv AI
Aug 26

CAFE: Self-Improving Search Agents Need Co-Evolving Feedback

CAFE (Coupled Agent–Feedback Evolution) is a framework that lets a shared‑parameter model alternate between acting as a search agent and as a critic that provides corrective feedback. By learning when to request feedback and how to use it, CAFE trains the agent to recover from its own failures and shapes rewards both online and offline. Experiments on seven search benchmarks show that CAFE outperforms other RL‑based agents, maintains gains on out‑of‑domain tests, and reduces hallucinations, indicating that co‑evolving feedback is essential for self‑improving search agents.

By Boyang Liu, Senjie Jin, Peixin Wang, Zhangyue Yin, Yibo Wang, Yuhao Zhou, Xinbing Liang, Shizheng Zhu, Yuhui Wang, Jingqi Tong, Zhiheng Xi, Jiazheng Zhang, Clive Bai, Clarenceai, Blaze Chen, Tao Gui, Qi Zhang, Xuanjing Huang
arXiv AI
Jul 7

Regime-Conditional Stabilisation of LLM-Augmented Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2607. 04470v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) offer a natural interface for translating human objectives into reward signals for cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), yet the training-time dynamics of this integration remain poorly understood.

By Faid Keddouri, Sohaib Houhou, Aissa Boulmerka, Nadir Farhi
arXiv AI
Sep 25

AD-WM: Action-Discriminative World Models for Counterfactual Model Predictive Control

AD-WM is a new action‑discriminative joint‑embedding world model designed for counterfactual model predictive control. It augments residual latent dynamics with action‑recovery regularization based on inverse dynamics and conditional mutual information, while discarding auxiliary heads at test time so that MPC remains unchanged. Experiments on OGBench‑Cube and other simulation environments show substantial gains in hard‑start success and mean success, and zero‑shot transfer to a Franka robot improves pick‑and‑place success from 42.2% to 71.1%.

By Jiabin Qiu, Zixuan Chen, Hongye Cao, Jieqi Shi, Jing Huo, Yang Gao
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

JEPA-x: Cross-Predictive Physics Grounding for Forecastable Latent Dynamics

JEPA-x is a cross‑predictive physics grounding method that aligns visual latent dynamics with privileged physical trajectories. By treating visual observations and physical states as two views of the same action‑conditioned trajectory and sharing a predictor, it forces the model to learn a common transition rule for both modalities. The physical branch is only used during training, so deployment incurs no extra cost, and the approach significantly reduces rollout drift and boosts control success across a multi‑task suite.

By Kehan Wen, Ziming Li, Siyuan Luo, Fan Shi
arXiv AI
Aug 6

Agentic Reinforcement Learning with Observation-Calibrated Self-Distillation

arXiv:2608. 04788v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model agents are commonly trained through reinforcement learning with sparse trajectory-level rewards, which offer limited guidance on how strongly individual tokens should be updated.

By Yi Yang, Cong Qin, Xiaodan Liu, Chishui Chen, Qing Dong, Yan Zhang, Cao Liu, Zhao Yang, Lu Pan, Jiaye Lin, Yi Feng