CVaR-Based Variational Quantum Optimization for User Association in Handoff-Aware Vehicular Networks

Efficient resource allocation is essential for optimizing various tasks in wireless networks, which are usually formulated as generalized assignment problems (GAP). GAP, as a generalized version of the linear sum assignment problem, involves both equality and inequality constraints that add computational challenges. In this work, we present a novel Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR)-based Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) framework to address GAP in vehicular networks (VNets). Our approach leverages a hybrid quantum-classical structure, integrating a tailored cost function that balances both objective and constraint-specific penalties to improve solution quality and stability. Using the CVaR-VQE model, we handle the GAP efficiently by focusing optimization on the lower tail of the solution space, enhancing both convergence and resilience on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. We apply this framework to a user-association problem in VNets, where our method achieves 23.5% improvement compared to the deep neural network (DNN) approach.

Diffusion Models for Smarter UAVs: Decision-Making and Modeling

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly adopted in modern communication networks. However, challenges in decision-making and digital modeling continue to impede their rapid advancement. Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms face limitations such as low sample efficiency and limited data versatility, further magnified in UAV communication scenarios. Moreover, Digital Twin (DT) modeling introduces substantial decision-making and data management complexities. RL models, often integrated into DT frameworks, require extensive training data to achieve accurate predictions. In contrast to traditional approaches that focus on class boundaries, Diffusion Models (DMs), a new class of generative AI, learn the underlying probability distribution from the training data and can generate trustworthy new patterns based on this learned distribution. This paper explores the integration of DMs with RL and DT to effectively address these challenges. By combining the data generation capabilities of DMs with the decision-making framework of RL and the modeling accuracy of DT, the integration improves the adaptability and real-time performance of UAV communication. Moreover, the study shows how DMs can alleviate data scarcity, improve policy networks, and optimize dynamic modeling, providing a robust solution for complex UAV communication scenarios.

OpenLKA: an open dataset of lane keeping assist from market autonomous vehicles

The Lane Keeping Assist (LKA) system has become a standard feature in recent car models. While marketed as providing auto-steering capabilities, the system's operational characteristics and safety performance remain underexplored, primarily due to a lack of real-world testing and comprehensive data. To fill this gap, we extensively tested mainstream LKA systems from leading U.S. automakers in Tampa, Florida. Using an innovative method, we collected a comprehensive dataset that includes full Controller Area Network (CAN) messages with LKA attributes, as well as video, perception, and lateral trajectory data from a high-quality front-facing camera equipped with advanced vision detection and trajectory planning algorithms. Our tests spanned diverse, challenging conditions, including complex road geometry, adverse weather, degraded lane markings, and their combinations. A vision language model (VLM) further annotated the videos to capture weather, lighting, and traffic features. Based on this dataset, we present an empirical overview of LKA's operational features and safety performance. Key findings indicate: (i) LKA is vulnerable to faint markings and low pavement contrast; (ii) it struggles in lane transitions (merges, diverges, intersections), often causing unintended departures or disengagements; (iii) steering torque limitations lead to frequent deviations on sharp turns, posing safety risks; and (iv) LKA systems consistently maintain rigid lane-centering, lacking adaptability on tight curves or near large vehicles such as trucks. We conclude by demonstrating how this dataset can guide both infrastructure planning and self-driving technology. In view of LKA's limitations, we recommend improvements in road geometry and pavement maintenance. Additionally, we illustrate how the dataset supports the development of human-like LKA systems via VLM fine-tuning and Chain of Thought reasoning.

PruneVid: Visual Token Pruning for Efficient Video Large Language Models

In this paper, we introduce PruneVid, a visual token pruning method designed to enhance the efficiency of multi-modal video understanding. Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promising performance in video tasks due to their extended capabilities in comprehending visual modalities. However, the substantial redundancy in video data presents significant computational challenges for LLMs. To address this issue, we introduce a training-free method that 1) minimizes video redundancy by merging spatial-temporal tokens, and 2) leverages LLMs' reasoning capabilities to selectively prune visual features relevant to question tokens, enhancing model efficiency. We validate our method across multiple video benchmarks, which demonstrate that PruneVid can prune over 80% of tokens while maintaining competitive performance combined with different model networks. This highlights its superior effectiveness and efficiency compared to existing pruning methods. Code: https://github.com/Visual-AI/PruneVid.

PunchBench: Benchmarking MLLMs in Multimodal Punchline Comprehension

Multimodal punchlines, which involve humor or sarcasm conveyed in image-caption pairs, are a popular way of communication on online multimedia platforms. With the rapid development of multimodal large language models (MLLMs), it is essential to assess their ability to effectively comprehend these punchlines. However, existing benchmarks on punchline comprehension suffer from three major limitations: 1) language shortcuts that allow models to solely rely on text, 2) lack of question diversity, and 3) narrow focus on a specific domain of multimodal content (e.g., cartoon). To address these limitations, we introduce a multimodal \textbf{Punch}line comprehension \textbf{Bench}mark, named \textbf{PunchBench}, which is tailored for accurate and comprehensive evaluation of punchline comprehension. To enhance the evaluation accuracy, we generate synonymous and antonymous captions by modifying original captions, which mitigates the impact of shortcuts in the captions. To provide a comprehensive evaluation, PunchBench incorporates diverse question formats and image-captions from various domains. On this basis, we conduct extensive evaluations and reveal a significant gap between state-of-the-art MLLMs and humans in punchline comprehension. To improve punchline comprehension, we propose Simple-to-Complex Chain-of-Question (SC-CoQ) strategy, enabling the models to incrementally address complicated questions by first mastering simple ones. SC-CoQ effectively enhances the performance of various MLLMs on PunchBench, surpassing in-context learning and chain-of-thought.

Video Creation by Demonstration

We explore a novel video creation experience, namely Video Creation by Demonstration. Given a demonstration video and a context image from a different scene, we generate a physically plausible video that continues naturally from the context image and carries out the action concepts from the demonstration. To enable this capability, we present $\delta$-Diffusion, a self-supervised training approach that learns from unlabeled videos by conditional future frame prediction. Unlike most existing video generation controls that are based on explicit signals, we adopts the form of implicit latent control for maximal flexibility and expressiveness required by general videos. By leveraging a video foundation model with an appearance bottleneck design on top, we extract action latents from demonstration videos for conditioning the generation process with minimal appearance leakage. Empirically, $\delta$-Diffusion outperforms related baselines in terms of both human preference and large-scale machine evaluations, and demonstrates potentials towards interactive world simulation. Sampled video generation results are available at https://delta-diffusion.github.io/.

ACDiT: Interpolating Autoregressive Conditional Modeling and Diffusion Transformer

The recent surge of interest in comprehensive multimodal models has necessitated the unification of diverse modalities. However, the unification suffers from disparate methodologies. Continuous visual generation necessitates the full-sequence diffusion-based approach, despite its divergence from the autoregressive modeling in the text domain. We posit that autoregressive modeling, i.e., predicting the future based on past deterministic experience, remains crucial in developing both a visual generation model and a potential unified multimodal model. In this paper, we explore an interpolation between the autoregressive modeling and full-parameters diffusion to model visual information. At its core, we present ACDiT, an Autoregressive blockwise Conditional Diffusion Transformer, where the block size of diffusion, i.e., the size of autoregressive units, can be flexibly adjusted to interpolate between token-wise autoregression and full-sequence diffusion. ACDiT is easy to implement, as simple as creating a Skip-Causal Attention Mask (SCAM) during training. During inference, the process iterates between diffusion denoising and autoregressive decoding that can make full use of KV-Cache. We verify the effectiveness of ACDiT on image and video generation tasks. We also demonstrate that benefitted from autoregressive modeling, ACDiT can be seamlessly used in visual understanding tasks despite being trained on the diffusion objective. The analysis of the trade-off between autoregressive modeling and diffusion demonstrates the potential of ACDiT to be used in long-horizon visual generation tasks. These strengths make it promising as the backbone of future unified models.

Question Answering for Decisionmaking in Green Building Design: A Multimodal Data Reasoning Method Driven by Large Language Models

In recent years, the critical role of green buildings in addressing energy consumption and environmental issues has become widely acknowledged. Research indicates that over 40% of potential energy savings can be achieved during the early design stage. Therefore, decision-making in green building design (DGBD), which is based on modeling and performance simulation, is crucial for reducing building energy costs. However, the field of green building encompasses a broad range of specialized knowledge, which involves significant learning costs and results in low decision-making efficiency. Many studies have already applied artificial intelligence (AI) methods to this field. Based on previous research, this study innovatively integrates large language models with DGBD, creating GreenQA, a question answering framework for multimodal data reasoning. Utilizing Retrieval Augmented Generation, Chain of Thought, and Function Call methods, GreenQA enables multimodal question answering, including weather data analysis and visualization, retrieval of green building cases, and knowledge query. Additionally, this study conducted a user survey using the GreenQA web platform. The results showed that 96% of users believed the platform helped improve design efficiency. This study not only effectively supports DGBD but also provides inspiration for AI-assisted design.

Marco-LLM: Bridging Languages via Massive Multilingual Training for Cross-Lingual Enhancement

Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable progress in recent years; however, their excellent performance is still largely limited to major world languages, primarily English. Many LLMs continue to face challenges with multilingual tasks, especially when it comes to low-resource languages. To address this issue, we introduced Marco-LLM: Massive multilingual training for cross-lingual enhancement LLM. We have collected a substantial amount of multilingual data for several low-resource languages and conducted extensive continual pre-training using the Qwen2 models. This effort has resulted in a multilingual LLM named Marco-LLM. Through comprehensive evaluations on various multilingual benchmarks, including MMMLU, AGIEval, Belebele, Flores-200, XCOPA and many others, Marco-LLM has demonstrated substantial improvements over state-of-the-art LLMs. Furthermore, Marco-LLM achieved substantial enhancements in any-to-any machine translation tasks, showing the effectiveness of our multilingual LLM. Marco-LLM is a pioneering multilingual LLM designed to not only perform exceptionally well in multilingual tasks, including low-resource languages, but also maintain strong performance in English and other major languages, closing the performance gap between high- and low-resource language capabilities. By bridging languages, this effort demonstrates our dedication to ensuring LLMs work accurately across various languages.

Structure-Based Molecule Optimization via Gradient-Guided Bayesian Update

Structure-based molecule optimization (SBMO) aims to optimize molecules with both continuous coordinates and discrete types against protein targets. A promising direction is to exert gradient guidance on generative models given its remarkable success in images, but it is challenging to guide discrete data and risks inconsistencies between modalities. To this end, we leverage a continuous and differentiable space derived through Bayesian inference, presenting Molecule Joint Optimization (MolJO), the first gradient-based SBMO framework that facilitates joint guidance signals across different modalities while preserving SE(3)-equivariance. We introduce a novel backward correction strategy that optimizes within a sliding window of the past histories, allowing for a seamless trade-off between explore-and-exploit during optimization. Our proposed MolJO achieves state-of-the-art performance on CrossDocked2020 benchmark (Success Rate 51.3% , Vina Dock -9.05 and SA 0.78), more than 4x improvement in Success Rate compared to the gradient-based counterpart, and 2x "Me-Better" Ratio as much as 3D baselines. Furthermore, we extend MolJO to a wide range of optimization settings, including multi-objective optimization and challenging tasks in drug design such as R-group optimization and scaffold hopping, further underscoring its versatility and potential.