arXiv:2306.10656v5 Announce Type: replace-cross 
Abstract: Virtual Human Generative Model (VHGM) is a generative model that approximates the joint probability over more than 2000 human healthcare-related attributes. This paper presents the core algorithm, VHGM-MAE, a masked autoencoder (MAE) tailored for handling high-dimensional, sparse healthcare data. VHGM-MAE tackles four key technical challenges: (1) heterogeneity of healthcare data types, (2) probability distribution modeling, (3) systematic missingness in the training dataset arising from multiple data sources, and (4) the high-dimensional, small-$n$-large-$p$ problem. To address these challenges, VHGM-MAE employs a likelihood-based approach to model distributions with heterogeneous types, a transformer-based MAE to capture complex dependencies among observed and missing attributes, and a novel training scheme that effectively leverages available samples with diverse missingness patterns to mitigate the small-n-large-p problem. Experimental results demonstrate that VHGM-MAE outperforms existing methods in both missing value imputation and synthetic data generation.

Virtual Human Generative Model: Masked Modeling Approach for Learning Human Characteristics

The story of the Ghost in the Shell’s main villain the Puppet Master hinted at a future where governments use hackers for espionage, at a time when most of the world had never connected to the internet.

الأنمي الكلاسيكي 'Ghost in the Shell' يقدم شخصية Puppet Master، التي تتنبأ بمستقبل تستخدم فيه الحكومات القراصنة للتجسس. ظهرت هذه التنبؤات في وقت كانت فيه غالبية سكان العالم لم تتصل بعد بالإنترنت، مما يبرز رؤية العرض لمشكلات الأمن السيبراني.

El clásico anime 'Ghost in the Shell' presenta al Puppet Master, un personaje que anticipa un futuro en el que los gobiernos utilizan hackers para el espionaje. Esta predicción surgió en un momento en que la mayoría de la población mundial aún no estaba conectada a Internet, destacando la previsión del programa sobre los problemas de ciberseguridad.

L'anime classique 'Ghost in the Shell' présente le Puppet Master, un personnage qui préfigure un avenir où les gouvernements utilisent des hackers pour l'espionnage. Cette prédiction est survenue à une époque où la majorité de la population mondiale n'était pas encore connectée à Internet, soulignant la prévoyance de l'émission concernant les problèmes de cybersécurité.

The classic anime 'Ghost in the Shell' features the Puppet Master, a character that foreshadows a future where governments utilize hackers for espionage. This prediction emerged at a time when the majority of the global population had yet to connect to the internet, highlighting the show's foresight regarding cybersecurity issues.

How the classic anime ‘Ghost in the Shell’ predicted the future of cybersecurity 30 years ago

<p>Text-to-image diffusion models have become the workhorses of generative imaging. They can paint photorealistic scenes, mimic art styles, and blend concepts in ways that were science fiction a few years ago. Yet they stumble embarrassingly on a skill that even small children master: basic spatial reasoning.</p>

<p>Ask a state-of-the-art model for “a dog to the right of a teddy bear” and you often get:</p>

<ul>
<li>The dog on the left</li>
<li>One of the objects missing</li>
<li>Or a bizarre hybrid where dog and teddy are fused into a single creature</li>
</ul>

<p><a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F49rtb08366xdl284o4z0.jpg" class="article-body-image-wrapper"><img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F49rtb08366xdl284o4z0.jpg" alt=" " width="800" height="532"></a></p>

<p>These failures become more severe for unusual compositions like “a giraffe above an airplane”. Traditional fixes range from expensive fine-tuning to brittle, hand-written loss functions at inference time—but both options come with significant downsides.</p>

<p>NVIDIA’s Learn-to-Steer framework (accepted to WACV 2026) proposes a different path: instead of hard-coding spatial rules or retraining the entire model, it learns a data-driven objective that can “steer” diffusion at inference time. The method reads the model’s own cross-attention maps, trains a lightweight classifier to detect spatial relations, and then uses that classifier’s gradient as a learned loss to nudge the generation towards layouts that match the prompt.</p>

<p>In this blog, we’ll unpack:</p>

<ul>
<li>What makes spatial reasoning so fragile in current diffusion models</li>
<li>How Learn-to-Steer learns spatial constraints from the model itself</li>
<li>How it steers images during generation without changing model weights</li>
<li>The top gains on spatial benchmarks like GenEval and T2I-CompBench</li>
<li>The trade-offs in compute cost and generality, and what this implies for future generative systems</li>
</ul>

<h1>
  
  
  Why Spatial Reasoning Fails in Text-to-Image Diffusion
</h1>

<h2>
  
  
  What Makes Spatial Relations So Difficult for Diffusion Models?
</h2>

<p>Modern diffusion models (e.g., Stable Diffusion, Flux) are excellent at what should appear in an image—objects, styles, textures—but much less reliable at where those objects should be.</p>

<p>Several factors contribute:</p>

<h3>
  
  
  Weak supervision of spatial language
</h3>

<ul>
<li>Training data rarely comes with precise annotations like “object A is left of object B”.
</li>
<li>Captions often describe content loosely, so phrases like “on top of” or “to the right of” are under-specified.</li>
</ul>

<h3>
  
  
  Entangled visual concepts
</h3>

<ul>
<li>When two objects frequently co-occur, models may treat them as a single visual blob.</li>
<li>This leads to object fusion, where a “cat on a bookshelf” becomes a cat-bookshelf chimera.</li>
</ul>

<h3>
  
  
  Benchmark saturation without spatial coverage
</h3>

<ul>
<li>Many standard text-to-image benchmarks emphasize realism and style, not relational accuracy.</li>
<li>Models can score highly while still being spatially confused.</li>
</ul>

<p>Empirical studies confirm three recurring failure modes on spatial benchmarks:</p>

<ul>
<li>Incorrect placement: Objects appear in the wrong relative position.</li>
<li>Missing entities: One or more requested objects never appear.</li>
<li>Merged entities: Two objects get mashed into a single, incoherent form.</li>
</ul>

<p>The model “knows” the objects you asked for, but it doesn’t reliably understand where to place them.</p>

<h1>
  
  
  Why Fine-Tuning and Handcrafted Losses Are Not Enough
</h1>

<p>Two broad strategies have tried to patch this gap:</p>

<h2>
  
  
  Fine-tuning for spatial awareness
</h2>

<ul>
<li>Retrain the diffusion model on datasets with explicit layouts or spatial annotations.</li>
<li>Methods like COMPASS show that this can significantly improve spatial accuracy.</li>
<li>But this comes at a cost: expensive retraining, sensitivity to dataset bias, and often regressions in other capabilities such as color fidelity or counting.</li>
</ul>

<h2>
  
  
  Handcrafted test-time losses
</h2>

<ul>
<li>At inference, inject extra loss terms that penalize spatial errors (e.g., overlapping activation maps, incorrect ordering).</li>
<li>These losses must be manually designed to approximate relations like “left of” or “above”.</li>
<li>In practice, these heuristics are fragile, often over-fitting simple cases and failing on more complex layouts.</li>
</ul>

<p>In short, we’ve lacked a solution that is:</p>

<ul>
<li>Data-driven rather than rule-based</li>
<li>Plug-and-play at inference time (no full retraining)</li>
<li>Targeted enough to improve spatial reasoning without damaging other strengths</li>
</ul>

<p>This is where Learn-to-Steer enters.</p>

<h1>
  
  
  How Learn-to-Steer Works: Data-Driven Steering at Inference
</h1>

<h2>
  
  
  How Cross-Attention Maps Provide a Spatial Signal
</h2>

<p>During diffusion, at each denoising step, the model computes cross-attention maps that connect text tokens to image regions. For a prompt like “a dog to the right of a teddy bear”, you can think of:</p>

<ul>
<li>One set of attention maps for “dog”</li>
<li>Another set for “teddy bear”</li>
<li>Additional context around words like “right” or “of”</li>
</ul>

<p>These maps form a rich, high-dimensional signal describing where in the image the model currently believes each word should manifest. Prior work has used cross-attention to locate objects or edit images; Learn-to-Steer goes further by treating them as a feature space in which spatial relations can be learned.</p>

<h2>
  
  
  How a Relation Classifier Becomes a Learned Loss
</h2>

<p>The core idea of Learn-to-Steer is to train a small relation classifier that takes cross-attention maps for two objects and predicts the spatial relation between them (left-of, right-of, above, below, etc.).</p>

<p>The pipeline looks like this:</p>

<h3>
  
  
  Collect supervision
</h3>

<ul>
<li>Use images where the true relation between object A and object B is known (from datasets like GQA and synthetic layouts).</li>
<li>For each image, invert it through the diffusion model with a descriptive prompt to recover cross-attention maps for the relevant tokens.</li>
</ul>

<p><a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fi9dbjsdc4c8yjz2r88k4.jpg" class="article-body-image-wrapper"><img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fi9dbjsdc4c8yjz2r88k4.jpg" alt=" " width="800" height="446"></a></p>

<h3>
  
  
  Train a classifier on attention patterns
</h3>

<ul>
<li>Input: attention maps for object A and object B.</li>
<li>Output: predicted relation (e.g., “A is left of B”).</li>
</ul>

<p>Naively, however, this leads to a subtle but serious issue: relation leakage.</p>

<h2>
  
  
  How Dual Inversion Solves the “Relation Leakage” Problem
</h2>

<p>If you always invert images with a correct prompt (e.g., “a dog to the left of a cat”), hints about the word “left” can leak into the attention patterns. A naïve classifier might then “cheat” by reading out linguistic artefacts instead of learning genuine visual geometry.</p>

<p>To prevent this, Learn-to-Steer uses a dual inversion strategy:</p>

<ul>
<li>For each image with a true relation (say, dog left of cat), create two prompts:

<ul>
<li>A positive prompt with the correct relation (“dog to the left of a cat”).</li>
<li>A negative prompt with an incorrect relation (“dog above a cat”).</li>
</ul>


</li>

<li>Run inversion with both prompts, obtaining two sets of attention maps.</li>

<li>Label both sets with the true relation (left-of), because that is what the image actually depicts.</li>

</ul>

<p>The classifier sees pairs of attention maps that share the same underlying geometry but differ in the relation words used in the prompt. To succeed, it must ignore the unreliable linguistic cue and zero in on the geometric evidence in the attention patterns. This breaks the leakage shortcut and yields a classifier that actually understands “left-of” in terms of where things appear in the model’s internal vision.</p>

<p>To improve robustness, NVIDIA combines:</p>

<ul>
<li>Real images (complex, natural scenes)</li>
<li>Synthetic images (simpler, cleaner attention patterns akin to generation scenarios)</li>
</ul>

<h1>
  
  
  How Learn-to-Steer Guides Images During Generation
</h1>

<h2>
  
  
  Step-by-Step: From Prompt to Steered Latent
</h2>

<p>Once the relation classifier is trained, Learn-to-Steer uses it at inference time as a learned objective:</p>

<h3>
  
  
  Parse the spatial prompt
</h3>

<ul>
<li>Extract subject, relation, and object from the text (e.g., subject = dog, relation = right-of, object = teddy bear).</li>
</ul>

<h3>
  
  
  Run diffusion as usual—but with checkpoints
</h3>

<ul>
<li>As the model denoises latent noise into an image, periodically extract cross-attention maps for the subject and object tokens.</li>
</ul>

<h3>
  
  
  Evaluate spatial correctness
</h3>

<ul>
<li>Feed these maps into the relation classifier, which outputs a probability distribution over relations.</li>
<li>Compare this distribution to the desired relation from the prompt, and compute a loss (e.g., cross-entropy).</li>
</ul>

<h3>
  
  
  Backpropagate into the latent
</h3>

<ul>
<li>Compute the gradient of this loss with respect to the latent representation at that timestep.</li>
<li>Nudge the latent in the direction that increases the classifier’s confidence in the correct relation.</li>
</ul>

<h3>
  
  
  Continue the diffusion process
</h3>

<ul>
<li>Let the denoising proceed from the adjusted latent.</li>
<li>Repeat this steering a number of times (often during the earlier half of the diffusion steps).</li>
</ul>

<h2>
  
  
  Support for Multiple Architectures and Relations
</h2>

<p><a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F578a9bjc7gmtemh0jbsj.jpg" class="article-body-image-wrapper"><img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F578a9bjc7gmtemh0jbsj.jpg" alt=" " width="800" height="477"></a></p>

<p>A key advantage of Learn-to-Steer is that it’s architecture-agnostic:</p>

<ul>
<li>It has been demonstrated on both UNet-based models (like Stable Diffusion 1.4/2.1) and MMDiT-style models (like Flux).</li>
<li>The only requirement is access to a text-image alignment signal (cross-attention or similar).</li>
</ul>

<p>It can also handle prompts with multiple constraints, such as:</p>

<p>“A frog above a sneaker below a teapot.”</p>

<p>Here, Learn-to-Steer alternates attention between relations:</p>

<ul>
<li>At one timestep, optimize the frog–sneaker relation.</li>
<li>At another, optimize the sneaker–teapot relation.</li>
</ul>

يهدف Learn-to-Steer من NVIDIA إلى معالجة قيد كبير في نماذج الانتشار من النص إلى الصورة، التي تعاني من ضعف في التفكير المكاني الأساسي. يمكن لهذه النماذج إنشاء صور فوتوغرافية واقعية، لكنها غالبًا ما تضع الأشياء في غير موضعها، مثل وضع كلب على اليسار بدلاً من اليمين بجانب دمية دب. تهدف هذه الخطوة إلى تحسين دقة الصور المولدة من خلال تعزيز الفهم المكاني.

El Learn-to-Steer de NVIDIA busca abordar una limitación significativa en los modelos de difusión de texto a imagen, que luchan con el razonamiento espacial básico. Estos modelos pueden crear imágenes fotorealistas, pero a menudo colocan mal los objetos en relación entre sí, como poner un perro a la izquierda de un oso de peluche en lugar de a la derecha. Este avance tiene como objetivo mejorar la precisión de las imágenes generadas al mejorar la comprensión espacial.

Le Learn-to-Steer de NVIDIA vise à résoudre une limitation importante des modèles de diffusion texte-image, qui ont du mal avec le raisonnement spatial de base. Ces modèles peuvent créer des images photoréalistes mais placent souvent mal les objets les uns par rapport aux autres, comme mettre un chien à gauche d'un ours en peluche au lieu de la droite. Cette avancée vise à améliorer l'exactitude des images générées en renforçant la compréhension spatiale.

NVIDIA's Learn-to-Steer is set to address a significant limitation in text-to-image diffusion models, which struggle with basic spatial reasoning. These models can create photorealistic images but often misplace objects in relation to one another, such as placing a dog to the left of a teddy bear instead of the right. This advancement aims to enhance the accuracy of generated images by improving spatial understanding.

What Is Learn-to-Steer? NVIDIA’s 2025 Spatial Fix for Text-to-Image Diffusion

<p>The $5tn firm handily beat expectations, but analysts are awaiting projections for future demand for firm’s AI chips</p><p>Nvidia shares are rising in after-market trading after the company posted third quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates.<strong> </strong>All eyes were on Nvidia, the bellwether for the AI industry and the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, as analysts and investors hoped the chipmaker’s third-quarter earnings would assuage concerns about whether the high-flying valuations of AI firms have peaked.</p><p>“Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia in a press release. “Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference – each growing exponentially. We’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI. The AI ecosystem is scaling fast – with more new foundation model makers, more AI startups, across more industries, and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.”</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/19/nvidia-earning-report">Continue reading...</a>

تجاوزت شركة إنفيديا توقعات وول ستريت مع نتائجها للربع الثالث، مما أظهر طلبًا قويًا على شرائح الذكاء الاصطناعي الخاصة بها. ارتفعت أسهم الشركة في التداول بعد السوق، مما يعكس ثقة المستثمرين وسط مخاوف بشأن تقييم سوق الذكاء الاصطناعي. وأبرز الرئيس التنفيذي جينسن هوانغ مبيعات قياسية ونظامًا بيئيًا سريع التوسع في مجال الذكاء الاصطناعي، مما يشير إلى نظرة إيجابية لمستقبل الشركة.

Nvidia superó las expectativas de Wall Street con sus ganancias del tercer trimestre, mostrando una fuerte demanda por sus chips de IA. Las acciones de la compañía aumentaron en el comercio posterior al cierre, reflejando la confianza de los inversores en medio de preocupaciones sobre la valoración del mercado de IA. El CEO Jensen Huang destacó las ventas récord y un ecosistema de IA en rápida expansión, indicando una perspectiva positiva para el futuro de la empresa.

Nvidia a dépassé les attentes de Wall Street avec ses résultats du troisième trimestre, montrant une forte demande pour ses puces d'IA. Les actions de l'entreprise ont augmenté lors des échanges après la clôture, reflétant la confiance des investisseurs face aux préoccupations concernant la valorisation du marché de l'IA. Le PDG Jensen Huang a souligné des ventes record et un écosystème IA en pleine expansion, indiquant une perspective positive pour l'avenir de l'entreprise.

Nvidia exceeded Wall Street expectations with its third-quarter earnings, showcasing strong demand for its AI chips. The company's shares rose in after-market trading, reflecting investor confidence amid concerns about the AI market's valuation. CEO Jensen Huang highlighted record sales and a rapidly expanding AI ecosystem, indicating a positive outlook for the company's future.

‘AI is going everywhere, doing everything:’ Nvidia beats Wall Street estimates amid market selloff and AI bubble fears

The SanDisk ExtremeFit USB-C flash drive is barely three grams, but offers 1TB of external storage and impressive speeds.

I refused to believe this coin-sized gadget was a storage drive, until I tried it for myself

<p>Swift 6.3 is bringing significant enhancements to Embedded Swift, the subset of Swift designed for resource-constrained environments like microcontrollers. Here's what's new:</p>

<h2>
  
  
  Key Improvements
</h2>

<h3>
  
  
  Libraries &amp; Standard Library
</h3>

<ul>
<li>
<strong>Floating-point printing</strong>: The <code>description</code> and <code>debugDescription</code> properties now work for Float, Double, and other floating-point types with a new all-Swift implementation</li>
<li>
<strong>Better diagnostics</strong>: New <code>EmbeddedRestrictions</code> diagnostic group warns about unsupported language constructs</li>
<li>
<strong>Swift MMIO 0.1.x</strong>: Includes code generation from SVD files and improved debugging with SVD2LLDB plugin</li>
</ul>

<h3>
  
  
  C Interoperability
</h3>

<ul>
<li>
<strong><code>@c</code> attribute</strong>: Define C-compatible functions and enums (from SE-0495)
</li>
</ul>

<div class="highlight js-code-highlight">
<pre class="highlight swift"><code><span class="kd">@c</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="kt">MyLib_initialize</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="kd">public</span> <span class="kd">func</span> <span class="nf">initialize</span><span class="p">()</span> <span class="p">{</span> <span class="o">...</span> <span class="p">}</span>
</code></pre>

</div>



<ul>
<li>
<strong>Improved type matching</strong>: Better tolerance for mismatching C signatures, eliminating cryptic deserialization errors</li>
</ul>

<h3>
  
  
  Debugging
</h3>

<ul>
<li>
<strong>Enhanced LLDB support</strong>: Better value printing for Embedded Swift types</li>
<li>
<strong>Core dump inspection</strong>: Dictionary, Array, and other common types now inspectable without a live process</li>
<li>
<strong>ARMv7m exception unwinding</strong>: Complete backtraces through exception frames</li>
</ul>

<h3>
  
  
  Linking &amp; Compilation
</h3>

<ul>
<li>
<strong><code>@section</code> and <code>@used</code> attributes</strong>: Control where globals are emitted and ensure symbols aren't stripped (SE-0492)</li>
<li>
<strong>Weak symbol definitions</strong>: Fixes duplicate symbol errors in diamond dependencies</li>
<li>
<strong><code>@export</code> attribute</strong>: Better control over function visibility (SE-0497)</li>
</ul>




<p><em>Want to dive deeper? Read the <a href="https://www.swift.org/blog/embedded-swift-improvements-coming-in-swift-6.3/" rel="noopener noreferrer">full announcement</a> on Swift.org</em></p>

تقدم Swift 6.3 تحسينات كبيرة على Embedded Swift، مما يعزز وظيفته في البيئات ذات الموارد المحدودة مثل المتحكمات الدقيقة. تشمل التحسينات الرئيسية قدرات جديدة لطباعة الأعداد العشرية، وتشخيصات أفضل مع مجموعة EmbeddedRestrictions، وإدخال Swift MMIO 0.1.x لتوليد الشيفرة وتصحيح الأخطاء.

Swift 6.3 presenta mejoras significativas en Embedded Swift, aumentando su funcionalidad para entornos con recursos limitados como microcontroladores. Las mejoras clave incluyen nuevas capacidades de impresión de números de punto flotante, mejores diagnósticos con el grupo EmbeddedRestrictions y la introducción de Swift MMIO 0.1.x para la generación de código y la depuración.

Swift 6.3 apporte des améliorations significatives à Embedded Swift, renforçant sa fonctionnalité pour les environnements à ressources limitées comme les microcontrôleurs. Les principales améliorations comprennent de nouvelles capacités d'impression de nombres à virgule flottante, de meilleurs diagnostics avec le groupe EmbeddedRestrictions, et l'introduction de Swift MMIO 0.1.x pour la génération de code et le débogage.

Swift 6.3 introduces significant upgrades to Embedded Swift, enhancing its functionality for resource-constrained environments like microcontrollers. Key improvements include new floating-point printing capabilities, better diagnostics with the EmbeddedRestrictions group, and the introduction of Swift MMIO 0.1.x for code generation and debugging.

Embedded Swift Gets Major Upgrades in Swift 6.3

<a href="https://www.techspot.com/news/110317-judge-dismisses-lawsuit-twice-due-alleged-deepfake-video.html" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.techspot.com/images2/news/ts3_thumbs/2025/11/2025-11-19-ts3_thumbs-252.jpg" width="800" height="560" style="padding: 15px 0" title="Judge dismisses lawsuit twice due to alleged deepfake video testimony" /></a><br />A California housing dispute is getting media attention over allegations that lawyers presented a deepfake video as witness testimony. NBC News reports that Judge Victoria Kolakowski became suspicious after the supposed witness showed signs that something was not right, including a monotone voice, fuzzy facial features, and repeated facial expressions....<br /><br /><a href="https://www.techspot.com/news/110317-judge-dismisses-lawsuit-twice-due-alleged-deepfake-video.html">Read Entire Article</a><br /><br />

تجذب نزاع سكني في كاليفورنيا الانتباه الإعلامي بعد ظهور مزاعم بأن المحامين قدموا فيديو مزيف كدليل شهود. أعربت القاضية فيكتوريا كولاكوفسكي عن شكوكها بشأن الفيديو، مشيرة إلى صوت الشاهد الأحادي، وملامح الوجه غير الواضحة، وتكرار التعبيرات. أدى ذلك إلى رفض الدعوى القضائية مرتين.

Una disputa de vivienda en California ha llamado la atención de los medios tras las alegaciones de que los abogados presentaron un video deepfake como testimonio. La jueza Victoria Kolakowski expresó su escepticismo sobre el video, señalando la voz monótona del testigo, rasgos faciales borrosos y expresiones repetitivas. Esto llevó al desestimado de la demanda en dos ocasiones.

Un litige immobilier en Californie suscite l'attention des médias après des allégations selon lesquelles des avocats auraient présenté une vidéo deepfake comme témoignage. La juge Victoria Kolakowski a exprimé des doutes sur la vidéo, notant la voix monotone du témoin, des traits faciaux flous et des expressions répétitives. Cela a conduit à l'annulation de la poursuite à deux reprises.

A California housing dispute has drawn attention after allegations surfaced that lawyers presented a deepfake video as witness testimony. Judge Victoria Kolakowski expressed skepticism about the video, noting the witness's monotone voice, unclear facial features, and repetitive expressions. This led to the dismissal of the lawsuit on two occasions.

Judge dismisses lawsuit twice due to alleged deepfake video testimony

arXiv:2511.13911v1 Announce Type: cross 
Abstract: Despite recent progress in predicting biomarker trajectories from real clinical data, uncertainty in the predictions poses high-stakes risks (e.g., misdiagnosis) that limit their clinical deployment. To enable safe and reliable use of such predictions in healthcare, we introduce a conformal method for uncertainty-calibrated prediction of biomarker trajectories resulting from randomly-timed clinical visits of patients. Our approach extends conformal prediction to the setting of randomly-timed trajectories via a novel nonconformity score that produces prediction bands guaranteed to cover the unknown biomarker trajectories with a user-prescribed probability. We apply our method across a wide range of standard and state-of-the-art predictors for two well-established brain biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease, using neuroimaging data from real clinical studies. We observe that our conformal prediction bands consistently achieve the desired coverage, while also being tighter than baseline prediction bands. To further account for population heterogeneity, we develop group-conditional conformal bands and test their coverage guarantees across various demographic and clinically relevant subpopulations. Moreover, we demonstrate the clinical utility of our conformal bands in identifying subjects at high risk of progression to Alzheimer's disease. Specifically, we introduce an uncertainty-calibrated risk score that enables the identification of 17.5% more high-risk subjects compared to standard risk scores, highlighting the value of uncertainty calibration in real-world clinical decision making. Our code is available at github.com/vatass/ConformalBiomarkerTrajectories.

تم تطوير طريقة جديدة للتنبؤ بمسارات المؤشرات الحيوية في مرض الزهايمر، حيث تعالج عدم اليقين في التنبؤات السريرية. تتيح هذه التقنية التنبؤية المتوافقة إجراء تنبؤات موثوقة من الزيارات السريرية التي تتم في أوقات عشوائية، مما يضمن أن تغطي نطاقات التنبؤ المسارات الفعلية للمؤشرات الحيوية باحتمالية محددة. تم اختبار النهج باستخدام بيانات التصوير العصبي من دراسات سريرية معروفة، مما يوضح فعاليته في تعزيز أمان التطبيقات السريرية.

Se ha desarrollado un nuevo método para predecir las trayectorias de biomarcadores en la enfermedad de Alzheimer, abordando la incertidumbre en las predicciones clínicas. Esta técnica de predicción conforme permite pronósticos fiables a partir de visitas clínicas programadas aleatoriamente, asegurando que las bandas de predicción cubran las trayectorias reales de los biomarcadores con una probabilidad especificada. El enfoque se probó utilizando datos de neuroimagen de estudios clínicos establecidos, demostrando su eficacia para mejorar la seguridad de las aplicaciones clínicas.

Une nouvelle méthode de prédiction des trajectoires de biomarqueurs dans la maladie d'Alzheimer a été développée, abordant l'incertitude des prédictions cliniques. Cette technique de prédiction conforme permet des prévisions fiables à partir de visites cliniques chronométrées de manière aléatoire, garantissant que les bandes de prédiction couvrent les trajectoires réelles des biomarqueurs avec une probabilité spécifiée. L'approche a été testée à l'aide de données d'imagerie cérébrale provenant d'études cliniques établies, démontrant son efficacité pour améliorer la sécurité des applications cl…

A new method for predicting biomarker trajectories in Alzheimer's disease has been developed, addressing the uncertainty in clinical predictions. This conformal prediction technique allows for reliable forecasts from randomly-timed clinical visits, ensuring that the prediction bands cover the actual biomarker trajectories with a specified probability. The approach was tested using neuroimaging data from established clinical studies, demonstrating its effectiveness in enhancing the safety of clinical applications.

Uncertainty-Calibrated Prediction of Randomly-Timed Biomarker Trajectories with Conformal Bands

arXiv:2511.14441v1 Announce Type: cross 
Abstract: To distinguish Markov equivalent graphs in causal discovery, it is necessary to restrict the structural causal model. Crucially, we need to be able to distinguish cause $X$ from effect $Y$ in bivariate models, that is, distinguish the two graphs $X \to Y$ and $Y \to X$. Location-scale noise models (LSNMs), in which the effect $Y$ is modeled based on the cause $X$ as $Y = f(X) + g(X)N$, form a flexible class of models that is general and identifiable in most cases. Estimating these models for arbitrary noise terms $N$, however, is challenging. Therefore, practical estimators are typically restricted to symmetric distributions, such as the normal distribution. As we showcase in this paper, when $N$ is a skewed random variable, which is likely in real-world domains, the reliability of these approaches decreases. To approach this limitation, we propose SkewD, a likelihood-based algorithm for bivariate causal discovery under LSNMs with skewed noise distributions. SkewD extends the usual normal-distribution framework to the skew-normal setting, enabling reliable inference under symmetric and skewed noise. For parameter estimation, we employ a combination of a heuristic search and an expectation conditional maximization algorithm. We evaluate SkewD on novel synthetically generated datasets with skewed noise as well as established benchmark datasets. Throughout our experiments, SkewD exhibits a strong performance and, in comparison to prior work, remains robust under high skewness.

تناقش الورقة الحاجة إلى التمييز بين السبب والأثر في النماذج الثنائية المتغيرة لاكتشاف الأسباب، وخاصة ضمن نماذج الضوضاء ذات الموقع والمقياس (LSNMs). تسلط الضوء على التحدي المتمثل في تقدير هذه النماذج عندما تكون مصطلحات الضوضاء مائلة، وهو أمر شائع في السيناريوهات الواقعية. يقدم المؤلفون SkewD، وهو خوارزمية قائمة على الاحتمالية مصممة لتحسين اكتشاف الأسباب الثنائية في هذه الظروف، مع معالجة القيود التي تواجهها المقدرات التقليدية التي تعتمد عادةً على التوزيعات المتماثلة.

El artículo discute la necesidad de distinguir entre causa y efecto en modelos bivariados para el descubrimiento causal, específicamente dentro de los modelos de ruido de localización-escala (LSNMs). Destaca el desafío de estimar estos modelos cuando los términos de ruido son sesgados, lo cual es común en escenarios del mundo real. Los autores presentan SkewD, un algoritmo basado en la verosimilitud diseñado para mejorar el descubrimiento causal bivariado en estas condiciones, abordando las limitaciones de los estimadores tradicionales que generalmente dependen de distribuciones simétricas.

Cet article aborde la nécessité de distinguer la cause de l'effet dans les modèles bivariés pour la découverte causale, en particulier dans les modèles de bruit de localisation-échelle (LSNMs). Il met en évidence le défi d'estimer ces modèles lorsque les termes de bruit sont asymétriques, ce qui est courant dans les scénarios du monde réel. Les auteurs introduisent SkewD, un algorithme basé sur la vraisemblance conçu pour améliorer la découverte causale bivariée dans ces conditions, en répondant aux limitations des estimateurs traditionnels qui reposent généralement sur des distributions symét…

The paper discusses the need to distinguish between cause and effect in bivariate models for causal discovery, specifically within location-scale noise models (LSNMs). It highlights the challenge of estimating these models when noise terms are skewed, which is common in real-world scenarios. The authors introduce SkewD, a likelihood-based algorithm designed to improve bivariate causal discovery under these conditions, addressing the limitations of traditional estimators that typically rely on symmetric distributions.

Skewness-Robust Causal Discovery in Location-Scale Noise Models

arXiv:2412.09498v3 Announce Type: replace-cross 
Abstract: Gradient descent is one of the most widely used iterative algorithms in modern statistical learning. However, its precise algorithmic dynamics in high-dimensional settings remain only partially understood, which has limited its broader potential for statistical inference applications.
  This paper provides a precise, non-asymptotic joint distributional characterization of gradient descent iterates and their debiased statistics in a broad class of empirical risk minimization problems, in the so-called mean-field regime where the sample size is proportional to the signal dimension. Our non-asymptotic state evolution theory holds for both general non-convex loss functions and non-Gaussian data, and reveals the central role of two Onsager correction matrices that precisely characterize the non-trivial dependence among all gradient descent iterates in the mean-field regime.
  Leveraging the joint state evolution characterization, we show that the gradient descent iterate retrieves approximate normality after a debiasing correction via a linear combination of all past iterates, where the debiasing coefficients can be estimated by the proposed gradient descent inference algorithm. This leads to a new algorithmic statistical inference framework based on debiased gradient descent, which (i) applies to a broad class of models with both convex and non-convex losses, (ii) remains valid at each iteration without requiring algorithmic convergence, and (iii) exhibits a certain robustness to possible model misspecification. As a by-product, our framework also provides algorithmic estimates of the generalization error at each iteration. As canonical examples, we demonstrate our theory and inference methods in the single-index regression model and a generalized logistic regression model, where the natural loss functions may exhibit arbitrarily non-convex landscapes.

يُعتبر الانحدار التدرجي خوارزمية تكرارية تُستخدم على نطاق واسع في التعلم الإحصائي، إلا أن دينامياتها في الإعدادات عالية الأبعاد لا تزال غير مفهومة تمامًا. يقدم هذا البحث توصيفًا مشتركًا غير حدّي لتكرارات الانحدار التدرجي وإحصائياتها المُعالجة في مشاكل تقليل المخاطر التجريبية، لا سيما في نظام الحقل المتوسط. تسلط النتائج الضوء على الدور المركزي لمصفوفات تصحيح أونساجر في فهم الاعتماديات بين جميع تكرارات الانحدار التدرجي، القابلة للتطبيق على كل من دوال الخسارة غير المحدبة والبيانات غير الغاوسية.

El descenso de gradiente es un algoritmo iterativo ampliamente utilizado en el aprendizaje estadístico, pero su dinámica en entornos de alta dimensión no se comprende completamente. Este artículo proporciona una caracterización no asintótica de los iterados del descenso de gradiente y sus estadísticas desbiaseadas en problemas de minimización del riesgo empírico, especialmente en el régimen de campo medio. Los hallazgos destacan el papel central de las matrices de corrección de Onsager en la comprensión de las dependencias entre los iterados del descenso de gradiente, aplicables tanto a funcio…

La descente de gradient est un algorithme itératif largement utilisé dans l'apprentissage statistique, mais sa dynamique dans des contextes de haute dimension n'est pas entièrement comprise. Cet article présente une caractérisation non asymptotique des itérations de la descente de gradient et de leurs statistiques débiaisées dans des problèmes de minimisation du risque empirique, en particulier dans le régime de champ moyen. Les résultats mettent en évidence l'importance des matrices de correction d'Onsager pour comprendre les dépendances entre les itérations de la descente de gradient, applic…

Gradient descent is a widely used iterative algorithm in statistical learning, yet its dynamics in high-dimensional settings are not fully understood. This paper presents a non-asymptotic characterization of gradient descent iterates and their debiased statistics in empirical risk minimization problems, particularly in the mean-field regime. The findings highlight the significance of Onsager correction matrices in understanding the dependencies among gradient descent iterates, applicable to both non-convex loss functions and non-Gaussian data.

Virtual Human Generative Model: Masked Modeling Approach for Learning Human Characteristics

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