Paper List
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Nyxus: A Next Generation Image Feature Extraction Library for the Big Data and AI Era
This paper addresses the core pain point of efficiently extracting standardized, comparable features from massive (terabyte to petabyte-scale) biomedi...
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Topological Enhancement of Protein Kinetic Stability
This work addresses the long-standing puzzle of why knotted proteins exist by demonstrating that deep knots provide a functional advantage through enh...
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A Multi-Label Temporal Convolutional Framework for Transcription Factor Binding Characterization
This paper addresses the critical limitation of existing TF binding prediction methods that treat transcription factors as independent entities, faili...
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Social Distancing Equilibria in Games under Conventional SI Dynamics
This paper solves the core problem of proving the existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibria in finite-duration SI epidemic games, showing they are a...
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Binding Free Energies without Alchemy
This paper addresses the core bottleneck of computational expense in Absolute Binding Free Energy calculations by eliminating the need for numerous al...
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SHREC: A Spectral Embedding-Based Approach for Ab-Initio Reconstruction of Helical Molecules
This paper addresses the core bottleneck in cryo-EM helical reconstruction: eliminating the dependency on accurate initial symmetry parameter estimati...
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Budget-Sensitive Discovery Scoring: A Formally Verified Framework for Evaluating AI-Guided Scientific Selection
This paper addresses the critical gap in evaluating AI-guided scientific selection strategies under realistic budget constraints, where existing metri...
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Probabilistic Joint and Individual Variation Explained (ProJIVE) for Data Integration
This paper addresses the core challenge of accurately decomposing shared (joint) and dataset-specific (individual) sources of variation in multi-modal...
Emergent Bayesian Behaviour and Optimal Cue Combination in LLMs
Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab, London, UK | AI Centre, Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, UK
30秒速读
IN SHORT: This paper addresses the critical gap in understanding whether LLMs spontaneously develop human-like Bayesian strategies for processing uncertain information, revealing that high accuracy does not guarantee robust multimodal integration.
核心创新
- Methodology Introduces BayesBench, the first psychophysics-inspired behavioral benchmark for LLMs with four magnitude estimation tasks (length, location, distance, duration) across text and image modalities.
- Methodology Develops Bayesian Consistency Score (BCS) to detect Bayes-consistent behavioral shifts even when accuracy saturates, enabling separation of capability from computational strategy.
- Biology Demonstrates emergent Bayesian behavior in capable LLMs without explicit training, with Llama-4 Maverick showing cue-combination efficiency exceeding human biological systems (RRE > 1 against Bayesian oracle).
主要结论
- GPT-5 Mini achieves perfect text accuracy (NRMSE ≈ 0) but fails to integrate visual cues efficiently, showing poor cue-combination efficiency (RRE < 1) despite high capability.
- Llama-4 Maverick demonstrates emergent Bayesian behavior with cue-combination efficiency exceeding Bayesian reliability-weighted baselines (RRE > 1), suggesting non-linear integration strategies.
- Bayesian Consistency Score reveals that more accurate models show stronger evidence of Bayesian behavior, with BCS positively correlated with accuracy across nine evaluated LLMs.
摘要: Large language models (LLMs) excel at explicit reasoning, but their implicit computational strategies remain underexplored. Decades of psychophysics research show that humans intuitively process and integrate noisy signals using near-optimal Bayesian strategies in perceptual tasks. We ask whether LLMs exhibit similar behaviour and perform optimal multimodal integration without explicit training or instruction. Adopting the psychophysics paradigm, we infer computational principles of LLMs from systematic behavioural studies. We introduce a behavioural benchmark - BayesBench: four magnitude estimation tasks (length, location, distance, and duration) over text and image, inspired by classic psychophysics, and evaluate a diverse set of nine LLMs alongside human judgments for calibration. Through controlled ablations of noise, context, and instruction prompts, we measure performance, behaviour and efficiency in multimodal cue-combination. Beyond accuracy and efficiency metrics, we introduce a Bayesian Consistency Score that detects Bayes-consistent behavioural shifts even when accuracy saturates. Our results show that while capable models often adapt in Bayes-consistent ways, accuracy does not guarantee robustness. Notably, GPT-5 Mini achieves perfect text accuracy but fails to integrate visual cues efficiently. This reveals a critical dissociation between capability and strategy, suggesting accuracy-centric benchmarks may over-index on performance while missing brittle uncertainty handling. These findings reveal emergent principled handling of uncertainty and highlight the correlation between accuracy and Bayesian tendencies. We release our psychophysics benchmark and consistency metric as evaluation tools and to inform future multimodal architecture designs111Project webpage: https://bayes-bench.github.io.