arXiv AI

Structure from Reasoning, Numbers from Search: On-Premise Open LLMs as Structural Priors for Coupled MIMO Controller Tuning

arXiv:2606. 11015v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Tuning controllers for strongly coupled multi-input multi-output (MIMO) industrial processes is hard: decentralized classical auto-tuning ignores loop interaction, and local numerical optimization from natural initializations stalls in the resulting non-convex cost landscape.

arXiv AI
Jun 29

When Is an LLM Worth It for Hyperparameter Optimization? A Budget-Matched Study on Tabular Data Finds the Warm-Start Is a Default Configuration, Not the Model

arXiv:2606. 21641v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have been proposed as hyperparameter-optimization (HPO) advisors that "warm-start" search from prior knowledge, proposing strong configurations in very few evaluations.

By Carson Rodrigues, Oysturn Vas, Isaiah Abner DCosta, Nithish Kumar Prabhakaran
arXiv AI
Sep 24

ANO: Robust Policy Optimization via Bounded, Redescending Gain Fields

The paper introduces Anchored Neighborhood Optimization (ANO), a new policy‑optimization method that directly designs a smooth, bounded gain field for the probability‑ratio surrogate objective. ANO anchors the identity map at a ratio of one, peaks at a specified trust‑region boundary, and limits the influence of extreme off‑policy samples while providing a bounded, redescending pull on outliers. Empirical results show ANO consistently outperforms existing methods on Atari and MuJoCo benchmarks, and it remains robust under aggressive learning‑rate settings.

By Yiheng Zhang, Yiming Wang, Kaiyan Zhao, Zhenglin Wan, Jiayu Chen, Leong Hou U
arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

TACO: Ternary Absolute-max Column-wise One-sparse Optimizer for LLM Fine-Tuning

The paper introduces TACO, a new optimizer for fine‑tuning large language models that drastically reduces optimizer state memory while preserving first‑order gradients. TACO selects the sign of the largest magnitude entry in each column of weight matrices, achieving a 174× reduction in persistent optimizer memory compared to AdamW8bit and a 2.9× decrease in peak training memory on OPT‑13B. This allows full‑parameter fine‑tuning of 30–32B‑parameter models on a single 80 GB GPU across multiple model families and tasks, with comparable accuracy and runtime to existing methods.

By Jichao Jiang (University of Central Florida), Cristian McGee (University of Central Florida), El Houcine Bergou (Mohammed VI Polytechnic University), Hanqin Cai (University of Central Florida), Aritra Dutta (University of Central Florida)
arXiv AI
Jul 21

MADA-RL: Multi-Agent Debate-Aware Reinforcement Learning for Parameter-Efficient Reasoning in Compact Models

arXiv:2607. 18006v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models achieve strong reasoning performance, but often at prohibitive training cost - a challenge that is especially acute for compact models ($\leq 4 \, \mathrm{B}$ parameters) trained under limited budgets.

By Martino M. L. Pulici, Cuong Xuan Chu, Evgeny Kharlamov, Zifeng Ding, Volker Tresp, Yunpu Ma
arXiv Machine Learning
4d ago

SCAMP: Sparse-anchor Control is One Small Projection

SCAMP introduces a training‑free, damped Gauss‑Newton method that adjusts only the sparse anchor points in a frozen differentiable decoder, keeping the rest of the state unchanged. By operating solely in the space of the anchors’ Jacobian rows, it solves a system whose size matches the number of anchor constraints rather than the full state, enabling efficient control across diverse text‑to‑motion generators. Applied to seven existing generators, SCAMP achieves anchor errors that match or surpass all released control methods and can close anchors on hosts that originally lacked them.

By Pengcheng Fang, Tengjiao Sun, Xiaoyu Zhan, Yanwen Guo, Hansung Kim, Xiaohao Cai, Dongjie Fu
arXiv AI
Sep 15

Drift-Constrained Optimization: Only Direction Matters in Fine-Tuning Instruct Models

The paper introduces Drift-Constrained Optimization (DCO), a framework that treats behavioral drift during fine‑tuning of instruction models as a bounded constraint rather than an uncontrolled side effect. By defining a drift budget, the authors reformulate fine‑tuning as a direction‑selection problem, showing that choosing different update directions can qualitatively change outcomes. Experiments on Qwen3 models demonstrate that carefully selected directions improve scientific reasoning and multilingual translation while preserving reasoning capabilities and general performance.

By Fei Yuan, Changjiang Gao, Yilei Tu, Yifeng Liu, Shujian Huang, Yu Qiao