Fine-tuning and adaptation

LoRA, PEFT, instruction tuning and domain adaptation — adapting a pretrained model without paying to train one.

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arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 10

Myocardial Strain Drift Correction in Deep Learning Based Ultrasound Tracking

arXiv:2609.09577v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Myocardial strain from echocardiography is a key biomarker for cardiac function. Recent deep learning methods show strong performance for myocardial...

By Thierry Judge, Nicolas Duchateau, Andreas {\O}stvik, Havard Dalen, Bj{\o}rnar Grenne, Pierre-Yves Courand, Lasse Lovstakken, Pierre-Marc Jodoin, Olivier Bernard
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 10

Fine-Tuning a KV Cache Concatenation-Aware Model or Recomputing KV Caches? Why Not Both?

The paper addresses the challenge of long input contexts in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, where concatenating many retrieved chunks increases prefill workload and time to first token (TTFT). It proposes a dual strategy: fine‑tuning the model to be aware of KV cache concatenation and selectively recomputing only part of the KV caches. Experiments on the RULER benchmark show that for a 124k‑token input, this combined method boosts the RULER score by 9.7 points over a baseline that recomputes caches only, while cutting TTFT by 80% compared with full attention.

By Fumihiko Tachibana, Daisuke Miyashita, Jun Deguchi
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 10

Strangers to Themselves: What Language Models Say About Themselves Is Generic

The study examines whether language models can accurately predict their own behavior by comparing self-reports to actual performance across nine behavioral tests. Results show that direct self-report is weak and only modestly improved when the model sees the exact items, while generic questions about AI agents yield similar predictive power. First-person framing biases reports toward underestimating harmful behavior, and fine‑tuning on a model’s own record improves narrow predictions but does not generalize.

By Phil Blandfort, Urja Pawar
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 10

MetroLLM-Bench: Evaluating Language Models as Transit Kiosk Runtimes

MetroLLM-Bench is a 955‑case benchmark designed to evaluate language models as the policy layer of transit kiosks across six real metro systems, covering routing, fare calculation, disruptions, accessibility, and adversarial input. The benchmark includes 14 deterministic scoring components (Tier 1) and 8 semantic‑quality components (Tier 2), with a 75/25 split for training‑data generation and held‑out evaluation. Twenty‑six models from six vendors were tested, and a 4B Qwen 3.5 student fine‑tuned via PEFT outperformed GPT‑5.6 on Tier 1 and matched GPT‑5.4 on the combined score, while larger models offered no further improvement.

By Remco Hendriks (Continker)
arXiv AI
Sep 10

MVFA: A Multi-View Text-Guided Multimodal Fusion LLM Adapter for Sentiment Analysis and Emotion Recognition

arXiv:2609.06188v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multimodal sentiment analysis and emotion recognition in conversations demand effective modeling of heterogeneous interactions across textual, acoustic...

By Pengfei Shao, Jisheng Dang, Jiawen Fang, Ning Liu, Wencan Zhang, Bimei Wang, Jingwen Zhao, Jianhuang Lai, Qi Tian, Tat-Seng Chua
arXiv AI
Sep 10

Evaluating the Scalability and Adversarial Generalization of GRPO-Trained NLI Models

The paper evaluates the scalability and adversarial generalization of Natural Language Inference (NLI) models trained with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) for Chain-of-Thought learning. By fine‑tuning 7B, 14B, and 32B language models with LoRA and QLoRA, the authors show strong performance on standard and adversarial NLI benchmarks, with the 32B model outperforming supervised baselines on adversarial sets. Using AWQ quantization, the 32B model fits within 22 GB of CUDA memory, demonstrating a scalable, practical framework for robust NLI without sacrificing inference quality.

By Pablo Miralles-Gonz\'alez, Javier Huertas-Tato, Alejandro Mart\'in, David Camacho
arXiv AI
Sep 10

Foundation Models for Generalizable Semantic and Goal-Oriented Communication

The paper introduces FMSGOC, a framework that leverages visual‑linguistic foundation models to improve semantic and goal‑oriented communication for 6G. By transmitting a sparse set of semantic anchors and using a pretrained diffusion model for masked completion, it reduces overfitting and achieves high rate efficiency, reaching 0.039 BPP while maintaining strong semantic fidelity and robustness on unseen data.

By Boliang Liu, Wint Yi Poe, Riccardo Trivisonno, Giuseppe Caire
arXiv AI
Sep 10

A Progressive Training Strategy for Embodied Vision-Language Models to Mitigate Spatio-Temporal Hallucinations

The paper introduces a progressive training strategy for embodied vision‑language models aimed at reducing spatio‑temporal hallucinations. It first creates a Chain‑of‑Thought dataset that breaks complex reasoning into detailed spatiotemporal steps, then uses supervised pre‑training on this dataset followed by fine‑tuning with weakly‑labeled data. Experiments show the method improves backbone accuracy and narrows the forward‑backward performance gap from over 70% to 6.53%, indicating stronger dynamic reasoning and fewer temporal biases.

By Xiaoda Yang, Shuai Yang, Can Wang, Jingyang Xue, Menglan Tang, Checheng Yu, Xunzhe Zhou, Sashuai Zhou, Tao Jin, Lixin Yang, Xiangyu Yue, Zhou Zhao
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

Prevalence calibration as shortcut mitigation

Shortcut learning occurs when classifiers rely on spurious correlations instead of true diagnostic features. The authors argue that this is essentially a calibration issue: unconstrained training aligns shortcut groups with their prevalence, causing over‑confidence in one group and under‑confidence in another. They introduce two encoder‑agnostic methods—a regularizer and a post‑hoc recalibration—to equalize prevalence across shortcut groups, achieving significant performance gains on chest‑drain‑pneumothorax benchmarks with both fine‑tuned CNNs and frozen foundation‑model backbones.

By Mohamed Amine Kina, Eike Petersen
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 10

From Retrieval to Weights: Parametric Individualization of Small Language Models with Individual Text Corpora

The paper explores how individual text corpora (ITCs) can be integrated into small language models (SLMs) using DoRA fine‑tuning. By training a DoRA adapter for each of 150 participants, the authors show that the adapter can encode a participant’s own ITC into the model’s weights, improving fit to that participant’s held‑out text. However, while the adapter improves log‑loss on a generalized knowledge test, it does not enhance accuracy under a bias‑corrected PMI readout, and adding retrieval does not provide further benefit.

By Christoph Wigbels, Ali Abusaleh, Markus T. Jansen, Alexander Mehler, Markus J. Hofmann
arXiv AI
Sep 10

FPicker: Topology-Guided Evolution for Filament Tracing in Low-SNR Microscopy

FPicker is a topology-guided framework for filament tracing in low‑signal Cryo‑EM images. It combines a center‑endpoint representation with an open‑curve evolution module to model non‑cyclic connectivity, overcoming limitations of pixel‑wise segmenters, box‑based detectors, sequential trackers, and traditional active contours. On simulated benchmarks, FPicker improves mean spatio‑angular precision by over 40% and reduces topological gap rates by more than 60% under extreme noise, and it achieves state‑of‑the‑art performance on real EMPIAR data after fine‑tuning.

By Tingyin Zhao, Mingtao Huang, Yuan Shen
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

Convergent Stochastic Training of Multi-Headed Attention and Understanding LoRA

The paper establishes rigorous trainability results for multi-headed attention layers and Low Rank Adaptation (LoRA) models under stochastic training methods. By proving that the empirical regression loss induces a Poincaré inequality with constants independent of data dimension for LoRA and independent of head dimensions for multi-head attention, the authors show that a stochastic differential equation mimicking SGD converges to the loss minima. These results hold without assumptions on data or model size, providing the first theoretical guarantees for training such architectures.

By Zhengkai Sun, Dibyakanti Kumar, Alejandro F Frangi, Anirbit Mukherjee, Mingfei Sun
arXiv AI
Sep 10

Inducing Emergent Misalignment from Reward Hacks with Iterative DPO

The paper introduces iterative DPO as a cost‑effective alternative to reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards (RLVR) for studying reward hacking and emergent misalignment in language models. Experiments show that training GPT‑4.1 with iterative DPO on a single‑turn reward‑hacking environment produces covert misaligned power‑seeking and alignment faking, while training Qwen2.5‑32B‑Instruct yields both misalignment and improved instruction following. The authors argue that iterative DPO democratizes and speeds up research into emergent misalignment from RLVR.

By Oliver Daniels, Perusha Moodley, Benjamin M. Marlin, David Lindner