February 2026

arXiv:2602.15860v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Current neural reranking approaches for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) rely on cross-encoders or large language models (LLMs), requiring substantial computational resources and exhibiting latencies of 3-5 seconds per query. We propose Maniscope, a geometric reranking method that computes geodesic distances on k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) manifolds constructed over retrieved document candidates. This approach combines global cosine similarity with local manifold geometry to capture semantic structure that flat Euclidean metrics miss. Evaluating on eight BEIR benchmark […]

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arXiv:2602.15859v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Building reliable conversational AI assistants for customer-facing industries remains challenging due to noisy conversational data, fragmented knowledge, and the requirement for accurate human hand-off – particularly in domains that depend heavily on real-time information. This paper presents an end-to-end framework for constructing and evaluating a conversational AI assistant directly from historical call transcripts. Incoming transcripts are first graded using a simplified adaptation of the PIPA framework, focusing on observation alignment and appropriate response […]

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arXiv:2602.15858v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) move from static reasoning tasks toward dynamic environments, their success depends on the ability to navigate and respond to an environment that changes as they interact at inference time. An underexplored factor in these settings is the representation of the state. Holding model parameters fixed, we systematically vary three key aspects: (1) state granularity (long form versus summary), (2) structure (natural language versus symbolic), and (3) spatial grounding […]

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arXiv:2602.15857v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The analysis of public opinion from multiple heterogeneous sources presents significant challenges due to structural differences, semantic variations, and platform-specific biases. This paper introduces a novel Collaborative Reasoning and Adaptive Fusion (CRAF) framework that systematically integrates traditional feature-based methods with large language models (LLMs) through a structured multi-stage reasoning mechanism. Our approach features four key innovations: (1) a cross-platform collaborative attention module that aligns semantic representations while preserving source-specific characteristics, (2) a hierarchical […]

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arXiv:2602.15856v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) effectively grounds Large Language Models (LLMs) with external knowledge and is widely applied to Web-related tasks. However, its scalability is hindered by excessive context length and redundant retrievals. Recent research on soft context compression aims to address this by encoding long documents into compact embeddings, yet they often underperform non-compressed RAG due to their reliance on auto-encoder-like full-compression that forces the encoder to compress all document information regardless of relevance […]

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arXiv:2602.15855v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Hybrid reasoning systems that combine learned components with model-based inference are increasingly deployed in tool-augmented decision loops, yet their runtime behavior under partial observability and sustained evidence mismatch remains poorly understood. In practice, failures often arise as gradual divergence of internal reasoning dynamics rather than as isolated prediction errors. This work studies runtime stability in hybrid reasoning systems from a Kalman-inspired perspective. We model reasoning as a stochastic inference process driven by an […]

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arXiv:2602.15854v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models show potential in task-oriented dialogue systems, yet existing training methods often rely on token-level likelihood or preference optimization, which poorly align with long-horizon task success. To address this, we propose Goal-Oriented Preference Optimization (GOPO), a hierarchical reinforcement learning framework that decouples strategy planning from response generation via an Expert Agent and a Customer Service Agent. The Expert Agent optimizes multi-turn goal preferences at the dialogue-trajectory level, while the Customer Service […]

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arXiv:2602.15853v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We propose a lightweight explainable guardrail (LEG) method for the classification of unsafe prompts. LEG uses a multi-task learning architecture to jointly learn a prompt classifier and an explanation classifier, where the latter labels prompt words that explain the safe/unsafe overall decision. LEG is trained using synthetic data for explainability, which is generated using a novel strategy that counteracts the confirmation biases of LLMs. Lastly, LEG’s training process uses a novel loss that […]

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arXiv:2602.15852v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Clinical natural language processing (NLP) models have shown promise for supporting hospital discharge planning by leveraging narrative clinical documentation. However, note-based models are particularly vulnerable to temporal and lexical leakage, where documentation artifacts encode future clinical decisions and inflate apparent predictive performance. Such behavior poses substantial risks for real-world deployment, where overconfident or temporally invalid predictions can disrupt clinical workflows and compromise patient safety. This study focuses on system-level design choices required to […]

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arXiv:2602.15851v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Applications of narrative theories using large language models (LLMs) deliver promising use-cases in automatic story generation and understanding tasks. Our survey examines how natural language processing (NLP) research engages with fields of narrative studies, and proposes a taxonomy for ongoing efforts that reflect established distinctions in narratology. We discover patterns in the following: narrative datasets and tasks, narrative theories and NLP pipeline and methodological trends in prompting and fine-tuning. We highlight how LLMs […]

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