arXiv AI

CRC-Screen: Certified DNA-Synthesis Hazard Screening Under Taxonomic Shift

arXiv:2605. 00074v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: DNA-synthesis providers screen incoming orders by searching the requested sequence against curated hazard lists.

arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

A Safe Prototype Is Not a Safety Direction: Reference Dependence and Prompt Confounds in Response-Safety Embeddings

The paper investigates whether response safety can be measured by the cosine similarity between a response embedding and the mean embedding of known‑safe responses. Using four frozen encoders and prompt‑controlled datasets, the authors find that a simple prototype (mean safe embedding) performs poorly (ROC‑AUC 0.457‑0.545) while an explicit safe‑minus‑unsafe reference achieves higher scores (0.588‑0.738). The study shows that a class mean is merely a location, not a safety direction, and that a reference with sufficient unsafe mass is needed to orient safety judgments.

By Sahil Kadadekar
arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

How Many Categories Are Enough? Distribution-Free Certification Limits for Few-Shot Anomaly Thresholds

The paper investigates how many normal samples are required to reliably set an alarm threshold for few‑shot anomaly detectors, focusing on distribution‑free certification limits. Using a frozen DINOv2 PCA residual ranker on 15 MVTec and 12 VisA categories, the authors show that simple leave‑one‑image‑out calibration is limited by resolution and shift, leading to empirical false‑alarm rates far above the nominal level. They derive a category‑count feasibility calculus, demonstrating that at least 14, 29, and 59 independent category draws are needed for 95% upper confidence bounds at α=0.20, 0.10, and 0.05, and propose the CRESS protocol to split source categories into reference, proposal, and certification roles. whyItMatters":"The study provides concrete numerical thresholds for the amount of source evidence needed to guarantee reliable anomaly detection in new categories, informing practical deployment of few‑shot detectors."

By Gia Huy Thai, Nguyen Thai Anh
arXiv AI
Sep 1

Benchmark Contamination: A Taxonomy Organized by Defeated Mitigation

The paper introduces a new taxonomy for benchmark contamination that categorizes leakage by the mitigation it defeats—direct, derivative, temporal, distributional, and acquired—covering both training‑time and evaluation‑time scenarios. It proposes a four‑field disclosure protocol to record contamination status alongside benchmark scores, and provides a JSON schema, validator, and examples. An empirical study of 41 documents using a pre‑registered instrument shows limited reporting of contamination types and variable reliability, highlighting gaps in current disclosure practices.

By Johanna Angulo, V\'ictor Yeste, Hector Espinos-Morato