arXiv subjects

Abhiram Bhupatiraju

Publications and source records attributed to Abhiram Bhupatiraju.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

When Does Feedback Help? Auditing Learned Voltage-Clamp Experimental Design

A learned scientific controller can outperform a misspecified planner without benefiting from feedback. We audit two synthetic voltage-clamp tasks with a training-selected fixed protocol, current masking, a Bayesian reference, and an excluded target. Five recurrent policies repeat one fixed protocol in all 1,200 off-grid rollouts; masking current changes no decision. In a crossed four-hypothesis task, a fixed diagnostic pulse is followed by one learned choice. Policies then use the first current, but tie a correctly specified Bayesian controller, and a fitted threshold reproduces the learned actions without being that controller. The excluded-target prediction gain is $4.6991\times10^{-6}$ nats per sample. Feedback use and protocol quality are separate tests. These cases establish neither biological discovery nor general RL superiority.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

Predictive Multiplicity in Cell-Fate Assignment: Label-Free Rashomon Sets and the Limits of Per-Cell Certification

Single-cell trajectory inference maps transcriptomic measurements onto developmental continua, yet configurations that fit the data equally well can assign conflicting cell fates. FateMultiplicity is a label-free framework that constructs a statistically admissible model set, or Rashomon set, without lineage labels, by evaluating model discrepancy on cross-fitted held-out genes under non-inferiority testing calibrated against random-seed variation. Multiplicity is large and depends more on the diversity of the model space than its size: twelve configurations of a second algorithm expose 20.0% of cells where twenty-four of the first expose 3.8%. Whether the per-cell certified fate margin FM yields more reliable assignments than the fitted model already provides is then tested, and it does not. On simulation ground truth, on the same cells, FM discriminates misassignment at AUC 0.682, against 0.965 for the baseline configuration's own decision margin (p = 0.003) and 0.854 for a seed-dispersion baseline. Informativeness is governed by the breadth of the admitted set, not its cardinality: at cardinality four, seed refits give 0.933 and hyperparameter-perturbed sets 0.701. Relaxing the infimum to a q-quantile recovers discrimination but converges toward the single model's own confidence; the supremum reaches 0.973 because theta*'s membership bounds it from below, while the infimum is unanchored. Multiplicity in trajectory inference is worth measuring and reporting, but per-cell certification over a label-free Rashomon set is not a route to more reliable fate calls. Two constructions survive: a margin-erosion ratio separates real from spurious branch points in simulation (AUC 0.890, untested on real data), and against clonally observed fate, uncertified cells disagree with their clone's outcome 16.4 percentage points more often than certified cells (p < 0.001).

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

Are Stated Reasoning Steps Causally Load-Bearing?

Chain-of-thought (CoT) monitoring assumes that the reasoning a model writes reflects the computation that directly produces its answer. Previous faithfulness metrics have been predominantly behavioral, as they simply edit the reasoning text and observe the resulting answer. However, our methodology aims to measure faithfulness causally at the activation level, specifically on self-generated reasoning. Unlike previous causal audits, which measure degradation, our interventions carry a known predicted target. In this way, each patch should switch the answer to a specific counterfactual entity derivable by construction. Specifically, we use synthetic multi-hop lookup tasks (2-6 hops). We patch the residual stream at the token span where the model states each intermediate step with the corresponding activations from a counterfactual run. For Qwen3-4B, 76.9% +/- 2.8% of stated steps are causally load-bearing (CLB) at the most responsive mid-network layer (random-position null: 11.3%; patching the underlying prompt fact: 83%, so stated steps carry approximately 96% of the achievable effect). Moreover, the standard behavioral test on the same items yields 88.2%, which overstates causal faithfulness by 11.4 percentage points (item-matched; 111:14 discordant pairs, p < 1e-15) and, for the easiest items, by up to 20 percentage points. This gap also has a clear capability dimension. Qwen3-1.7B is far less causally faithful overall (54.8%), with its faithfulness collapsing as reasoning depth increases (68% at 2 hops to 30% at 6), while Qwen3-4B remains relatively flat. Although stated reasoning can be causally meaningful, standard behavioral tests tend to overestimate its causal faithfulness, particularly on easier examples where model reasoning appears most fluent.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Explainability-Driven Feature Engineering for Mid-Term Electricity Load Forecasting in ERCOT's SCENT Region

Accurate load forecasting is essential to the operation of modern electric power systems. Given the sensitivity of electricity demand to weather variability and temporal dynamics, capturing non-linear patterns is essential for long-term planning. This paper presents a comparative analysis of machine learning models, Linear Regression, XGBoost, LightGBM, and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), for forecasting system-wide electricity load up to one year in advance. Midterm forecasting has shown to be crucial for maintenance scheduling, resource allocation, financial forecasting, and market participation. The paper places a focus on the use of a method called "Shapley Additive Explanations" (SHAP) to improve model explainability. SHAP enables the quantification of feature contributions, guiding informed feature engineering and improving both model transparency and forecasting accuracy.

cs.LG↗