arXiv Machine Learning

STEER: Reducing Inference Cost in Relational Foundation Models through Semantically Informed Sampling

STEER is a sampling method for relational foundation models that reduces inference cost by focusing on the most relevant tables for a prediction task. It uses a large language model to rank foreign‑key edges in the database schema into relevance tiers, then assigns traversal probabilities based on these tiers. Evaluated on three state‑of‑the‑art RFMs, STEER cuts inference context size by roughly 40% on average while preserving or improving accuracy.

arXiv AI
Sep 2

Replacing Training with Memory: Listwise Selection for Text-to-SQL

The paper proposes a fine‑tuning‑free listwise selector for Text‑to‑SQL systems that replaces traditional learning objectives with inference‑time strategies. It introduces reusable structured memories (MaP‑SQL) that encode mappings from natural language to schema elements, SQL operations, and expected outputs, and uses these memories to evaluate candidate queries. To reduce positional bias, the method aggregates rankings across multiple input permutations, optimizing inference cost through execution results and pointwise scoring. The approach achieves higher selection accuracy, fewer unnecessary comparisons, and outperforms the prior state‑of‑the‑art R^3‑SQL on the BIRD‑dev benchmark while using fewer tokens.

By Yeonseok Jeong, Soyoung Yoon, Seongjun Lee, Seung-won Hwang
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 11

LLMAR: A Tuning-Free Recommendation Framework for Sparse and Text-Rich Industrial Domains

LLMAR is a tuning‑free recommendation framework designed for sparse, text‑rich industrial B2B domains. It transforms user behavioral history into structured semantic motives using LLM inference, employs a reflection loop to self‑correct hallucinations, and operates cost‑effectively with asynchronous batch processing. Experiments on MovieLens‑1M, Amazon Prime Pantry, and a construction risk dataset show LLMAR surpasses state‑of‑the‑art learning models, achieving up to a 54.6% nDCG@10 improvement while keeping inference costs around $1 per 1,000 users.

By Ryogo Hishikawa, Ichiro Kataoka, Shinya Yuda
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 19

Understanding the Surprising Generalization Properties of Tabular Foundation Models

The paper investigates how Tabular Foundation Models (TFMs) can achieve strong transfer learning by self‑supervised pre‑training on a single real table. It finds that a table’s usefulness is largely determined by its number of features rather than instances, and that fine‑grained column‑level preprocessing improves downstream performance while dataset‑level filtering does not. The authors propose that tabular in‑context generalization is primarily retrieval‑based, with models learning to identify and aggregate relevant examples from the provided context.

By Nour Shaheen, Junwei Ma, Alex Labach, Frank Hutter, Valentin Thomas, Anthony L. Caterini
arXiv AI
Sep 17

The Death of Schema Linking? Text-to-SQL in the Age of Well-Reasoned Language Models

The paper examines the role of schema linking in Text-to-SQL systems and finds that recent large language models can effectively use relevant schema elements even when many irrelevant ones are present. Consequently, the authors eliminate schema linking when the entire schema fits within the model’s context window, instead employing augmentation, selection, and correction techniques to enhance accuracy. Their approach achieves first place on the BIRD benchmark with a 71.83% accuracy.

By Karime Maamari, Fadhil Abubaker, Daniel Jaroslawicz, Amine Mhedhbi
arXiv AI
Sep 15

Beyond Quacking: Deep Integration of Language Models and RAG into DuckDB

The paper introduces FlockMTL, an extension for database management systems that deeply integrates large language models and retrieval‑augmented generation into DuckDB. It provides model‑driven scalar and aggregate functions, cost‑based optimizations like batching and caching, and new SQL DDL abstractions (PROMPT and MODEL) to treat LLMs as first‑class schema objects. These features aim to simplify the development of knowledge‑intensive analytical applications by reducing the effort required to orchestrate heterogeneous data systems and manage LLM context.

By Anas Dorbani, Sunny Yasser, Jimmy Lin, Amine Mhedhbi
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 18

Understanding the Surprising Generalization Properties of Tabular Foundation Models

The paper investigates how Tabular Foundation Models (TFMs) can achieve strong transfer learning by self‑supervised pre‑training on a single real table, rather than large synthetic or real datasets. It finds that a table’s usefulness for downstream tasks is mainly determined by the number of features, not instances, and that fine‑grained column‑level preprocessing improves performance while dataset‑level filtering does not. The authors propose a task‑centric, retrieval‑based view of in‑context generalization, suggesting that effective TFMs identify and aggregate relevant examples from the provided context.