Papers for

neural model developers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Brain information measures explain intelligence through n-body model

If the brain were so simple: Information-based drivers of intelligence and their interaction through an n-body-inspired framework

Abstract: Theories of how the brain processes information and returns intelligent outputs are numerous and often difficult to conclusively test. Here, we consider an approach grounded in informatics and algorithmic thermodynamics for how neural systems respond to different patterns of information in different ways, with a focus on the relationship between the information entropy of a signal and a new proposed quantity we term information enthalpy, which represents the internal resource of structured information within a system available to be used for predictions and other forms of work. To evaluate the capacity of the external signals to increase information enthalpy in the system, we introduce the information enthalpy potential (IEP) as a defined metric. We propose and implement a method for quantifying the amount of potential information enthalpy - the IEP - in a given signal across a range of example signals. We offer a conjecture of how information enthalpy may be treated by neural systems within a biological framework before showing how it may integrate and offer falsifiability to existing approaches such as the Free Energy Principle. This framework is also positioned in light of the role of neural criticality. Finally, we postulate a testable and falsifiable framework where the distinct mechanisms within each driver interact through a described n-body-inspired model to govern the "motion" of a neural system through a high dimensional state-space. Through these processes, it is proposed that these features form the most fundamental basis of the neural drivers that give rise to the complexity of adaptive behaviors that are commonly called: intelligence.

Thu 8 OctInformation Theory
The gist
Understanding how the brain processes information and makes decisions is complicated. This paper introduces new ways to measure and think about information inside the brain, like information enthalpy and information enthalpy potential, which describe the brain's internal resources for making predictions. The authors connect these ideas with existing brain theories and propose a model inspired by physics (an n-body model) to explain how different brain processes interact to produce intelligence. Their framework offers testable ideas for better understanding neural behavior.
Open → 2610.11142v1

Text prompts do not clearly guide neural models for physical simulations

Does Text Steer Neural PDE Surrogates? A Controlled Diagnostic with OperatorCLIP

Abstract: Lower error from a text-conditioned neural surrogate does not, by itself, show that the model uses the meaning of the text. We examine this attribution problem with OperatorCLIP, comparing an unconditioned FNO, a constant-sentence FiLM control, and a fixed task description trained with contrastive alignment. Three-seed experiments cover Darcy2D, ShallowWater2D, and three-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes (CNS3D). Constant conditioning has lower mean test error on both 2D tasks. Relative to this control, task text plus alignment has a similar mean on ShallowWater2D and CNS3D and a higher mean on Darcy2D; these descriptive comparisons have substantial seed uncertainty. The latter comparison changes both prompt content and loss, so it isolates neither effect. The text encoder is trained from scratch, and each conditioned model sees only one description during training. In this regime, pairwise InfoNCE cannot identify matched pairs and has minimum $\log B$. Prompt interventions show no reliable semantic ordering. This methodological caution demonstrates why pathway controls are needed; it neither establishes semantic competence of the encoder nor tests the effectiveness of text under varying physical context.

Tue 29 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
Lower error rates when using text-based instructions in neural models do not prove the models understand the text's meaning. The authors tested this by comparing different ways of including text prompts in models simulating physical systems like fluid flow. They found that just adding text did not reliably help the models or show that they used the text meaningfully. This means more careful tests are needed before assuming such models truly understand or use text descriptions.
Open → 2609.38517v1