Daily Paper Cast

Jingwen Liang, Gengyu Wang

We update every weekday to discuss highest-voted papers from Huggingface Daily Paper (https://huggingface.co/papers). Both the podcast scripts and audio are generated by AI. Feedback and suggestions are welcome! Email us: dailypapercast.ai@gmail.com Creator: Jingwen Liang, 3D ML, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jingwen-liang/ Gengyu Wang, LLM ML, http://wanggengyu.com Listen on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/21nrhmdaA8qoBiH8q03NXL Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daily-paper-cast/id1777620236 Cover Image by Kawen Kuang https://kawen.art

  1. 14H AGO

    Seedance 2.0: Advancing Video Generation for World Complexity

    🤗 Upvotes: 118 | cs.CV Authors: Team Seedance, De Chen, Liyang Chen, Xin Chen, Ying Chen, Zhuo Chen, Zhuowei Chen, Feng Cheng, Tianheng Cheng, Yufeng Cheng, Mojie Chi, Xuyan Chi, Jian Cong, Qinpeng Cui, Fei Ding, Qide Dong, Yujiao Du, Haojie Duanmu, Junliang Fan, Jiarui Fang, Jing Fang, Zetao Fang, Chengjian Feng, Yu Gao, Diandian Gu, Dong Guo, Hanzhong Guo, Qiushan Guo, Boyang Hao, Hongxiang Hao, Haoxun He, Jiaao He, Qian He, Tuyen Hoang, Heng Hu, Ruoqing Hu, Yuxiang Hu, Jiancheng Huang, Weilin Huang, Zhaoyang Huang, Zhongyi Huang, Jishuo Jin, Ming Jing, Ashley Kim, Shanshan Lao, Yichong Leng, Bingchuan Li, Gen Li, Haifeng Li, Huixia Li, Jiashi Li, Ming Li, Xiaojie Li, Xingxing Li, Yameng Li, Yiying Li, Yu Li, Yueyan Li, Chao Liang, Han Liang, Jianzhong Liang, Ying Liang, Wang Liao, J. H. Lien, Shanchuan Lin, Xi Lin, Feng Ling, Yue Ling, Fangfang Liu, Jiawei Liu, Jihao Liu, Jingtuo Liu, Shu Liu, Sichao Liu, Wei Liu, Xue Liu, Zuxi Liu, Ruijie Lu, Lecheng Lyu, Jingting Ma, Tianxiang Ma, Xiaonan Nie, Jingzhe Ning, Junjie Pan, Xitong Pan, Ronggui Peng, Xueqiong Qu, Yuxi Ren, Yuchen Shen, Guang Shi, Lei Shi, Yinglong Song, Fan Sun, Li Sun, Renfei Sun, Wenjing Tang, Boyang Tao, Zirui Tao, Dongliang Wang, Feng Wang, Hulin Wang, Ke Wang, Qingyi Wang, Rui Wang, Shuai Wang, Shulei Wang, Weichen Wang, Xuanda Wang, Yanhui Wang, Yue Wang, Yuping Wang, Yuxuan Wang, Zijie Wang, Ziyu Wang, Guoqiang Wei, Meng Wei, Di Wu, Guohong Wu, Hanjie Wu, Huachao Wu, Jian Wu, Jie Wu, Ruolan Wu, Shaojin Wu, Xiaohu Wu, Xinglong Wu, Yonghui Wu, Ruiqi Xia, Xin Xia, Xuefeng Xiao, Shuang Xu, Bangbang Yang, Jiaqi Yang, Runkai Yang, Tao Yang, Yihang Yang, Zhixian Yang, Ziyan Yang, Fulong Ye, Bingqian Yi, Xing Yin, Yongbin You, Linxiao Yuan, Weihong Zeng, Xuejiao Zeng, Yan Zeng, Siyu Zhai, Zhonghua Zhai, Bowen Zhang, Chenlin Zhang, Heng Zhang, Jun Zhang, Manlin Zhang, Peiyuan Zhang, Shuo Zhang, Xiaohe Zhang, Xiaoying Zhang, Xinyan Zhang, Xinyi Zhang, Yichi Zhang, Zixiang Zhang, Haiyu Zhao, Huating Zhao, Liming Zhao, Yian Zhao, Guangcong Zheng, Jianbin Zheng, Xiaozheng Zheng, Zerong Zheng, Kuan Zhu, Feilong Zuo Title: Seedance 2.0: Advancing Video Generation for World Complexity Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.14148v1 Abstract: Seedance 2.0 is a new native multi-modal audio-video generation model, officially released in China in early February 2026. Compared with its predecessors, Seedance 1.0 and 1.5 Pro, Seedance 2.0 adopts a unified, highly efficient, and large-scale architecture for multi-modal audio-video joint generation. This allows it to support four input modalities: text, image, audio, and video, by integrating one of the most comprehensive suites of multi-modal content reference and editing capabilities available in the industry to date. It delivers substantial, well-rounded improvements across all key sub-dimensions of video and audio generation. In both expert evaluations and public user tests, the model has demonstrated performance on par with the leading levels in the field. Seedance 2.0 supports direct generation of audio-video content with durations ranging from 4 to 15 seconds, with native output resolutions of 480p and 720p. For multi-modal inputs as reference, its current open platform supports up to 3 video clips, 9 images, and 3 audio clips. In addition, we provide Seedance 2.0 Fast version, an accelerated variant of Seedance 2.0 designed to boost generation speed for low-latency scenarios. Seedance 2.0 has delivered significant improvements to its foundational generation capabilities and multi-modal generation performance, bringing an enhanced creative experience for end users.

    28 min
  2. 14H AGO

    GameWorld: Towards Standardized and Verifiable Evaluation of Multimodal Game Agents

    🤗 Upvotes: 106 | cs.CV, cs.AI, cs.HC Authors: Mingyu Ouyang, Siyuan Hu, Kevin Qinghong Lin, Hwee Tou Ng, Mike Zheng Shou Title: GameWorld: Towards Standardized and Verifiable Evaluation of Multimodal Game Agents Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07429v1 Abstract: Towards an embodied generalist for real-world interaction, Multimodal Large Language Model (MLLM) agents still suffer from challenging latency, sparse feedback, and irreversible mistakes. Video games offer an ideal testbed with rich visual observations and closed-loop interaction, demanding fine-grained perception, long-horizon planning, and precise control. However, systematically evaluating these capabilities is currently hindered by heterogeneous action interfaces and heuristic verification. To this end, we introduce GameWorld, a benchmark designed for standardized and verifiable evaluation of MLLMs as generalist game agents in browser environments. Two game agent interfaces are studied: (i) computer-use agents that directly emit keyboard and mouse controls, and (ii) generalist multimodal agents that act in a semantic action space via deterministic Semantic Action Parsing. GameWorld contains 34 diverse games and 170 tasks, each paired with state-verifiable metrics for outcome-based evaluation. The results across 18 model-interface pairs suggest that even the best performing agent is far from achieving human capabilities on video games. Extensive experiments of repeated full-benchmark reruns demonstrate the robustness of the benchmark, while further studies on real-time interaction, context-memory sensitivity, and action validity expose more challenges ahead for game agents. Together, by offering a standardized, verifiable, and reproducible evaluation framework, GameWorld lays a robust foundation for advancing research on multimodal game agents and beyond. The project page is at https://gameworld-bench.github.io.

    26 min
  3. 14H AGO

    RationalRewards: Reasoning Rewards Scale Visual Generation Both Training and Test Time

    🤗 Upvotes: 96 | cs.AI, cs.LG Authors: Haozhe Wang, Cong Wei, Weiming Ren, Jiaming Liu, Fangzhen Lin, Wenhu Chen Title: RationalRewards: Reasoning Rewards Scale Visual Generation Both Training and Test Time Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11626v2 Abstract: Most reward models for visual generation reduce rich human judgments to a single unexplained score, discarding the reasoning that underlies preference. We show that teaching reward models to produce explicit, multi-dimensional critiques before scoring transforms them from passive evaluators into active optimization tools, improving generators in two complementary ways: at training time, structured rationales provide interpretable, fine-grained rewards for reinforcement learning; at test time, a Generate-Critique-Refine loop turns critiques into targeted prompt revisions that improve outputs without any parameter updates. To train such a reward model without costly rationale annotations, we introduce Preference-Anchored Rationalization (PARROT), a principled framework that recovers high-quality rationales from readily available preference data through anchored generation, consistency filtering, and distillation. The resulting model, RationalRewards (8B), achieves state-of-the-art preference prediction among open-source reward models, competitive with Gemini-2.5-Pro, while using 10-20x less training data than comparable baselines. As an RL reward, it consistently improves text-to-image and image-editing generators beyond scalar alternatives. Most strikingly, its test-time critique-and-refine loop matches or exceeds RL-based fine-tuning on several benchmarks, suggesting that structured reasoning can unlock latent capabilities in existing generators that suboptimal prompts fail to elicit.

    24 min
  4. 14H AGO

    SpatialEvo: Self-Evolving Spatial Intelligence via Deterministic Geometric Environments

    🤗 Upvotes: 60 | cs.CV, cs.CL Authors: Dinging Li, Yingxiu Zhao, Xinrui Cheng, Kangheng Lin, Hongbo Peng, Hongxing Li, Zixuan Wang, Yuhong Dai, Haodong Li, Jia Wang, Yukang Shi, Liang Zhao, Jianjian Sun, Zheng Ge, Xiangyu Zhang, Weiming Lu, Jun Xiao, Yueting Zhuang, Yongliang Shen Title: SpatialEvo: Self-Evolving Spatial Intelligence via Deterministic Geometric Environments Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.14144v1 Abstract: Spatial reasoning over three-dimensional scenes is a core capability for embodied intelligence, yet continuous model improvement remains bottlenecked by the cost of geometric annotation. The self-evolving paradigm offers a promising path, but its reliance on model consensus to construct pseudo-labels causes training to reinforce rather than correct the model's own geometric errors. We identify a property unique to 3D spatial reasoning that circumvents this limitation: ground truth is a deterministic consequence of the underlying geometry, computable exactly from point clouds and camera poses without any model involvement. Building on this insight, we present SpatialEvo, a self-evolving framework for 3D spatial reasoning, centered on the Deterministic Geometric Environment (DGE). The DGE formalizes 16 spatial reasoning task categories under explicit geometric validation rules and converts unannotated 3D scenes into zero-noise interactive oracles, replacing model consensus with objective physical feedback. A single shared-parameter policy co-evolves across questioner and solver roles under DGE constraints: the questioner generates physically valid spatial questions grounded in scene observations, while the solver derives precise answers against DGE-verified ground truth. A task-adaptive scheduler endogenously concentrates training on the model's weakest categories, producing a dynamic curriculum without manual design. Experiments across nine benchmarks demonstrate that SpatialEvo achieves the highest average score at both 3B and 7B scales, with consistent gains on spatial reasoning benchmarks and no degradation on general visual understanding.

    24 min
  5. 14H AGO

    OccuBench: Evaluating AI Agents on Real-World Professional Tasks via Language Environment Simulation

    🤗 Upvotes: 50 | cs.CL Authors: Xiaomeng Hu, Yinger Zhang, Fei Huang, Jianhong Tu, Yang Su, Lianghao Deng, Yuxuan Liu, Yantao Liu, Dayiheng Liu, Tsung-Yi Ho Title: OccuBench: Evaluating AI Agents on Real-World Professional Tasks via Language Environment Simulation Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.10866v2 Abstract: AI agents are expected to perform professional work across hundreds of occupational domains (from emergency department triage to nuclear reactor safety monitoring to customs import processing), yet existing benchmarks can only evaluate agents in the few domains where public environments exist. We introduce OccuBench, a benchmark covering 100 real-world professional task scenarios across 10 industry categories and 65 specialized domains, enabled by Language Environment Simulators (LESs) that simulate domain-specific environments through LLM-driven tool response generation. Our multi-agent synthesis pipeline automatically produces evaluation instances with guaranteed solvability, calibrated difficulty, and document-grounded diversity. OccuBench evaluates agents along two complementary dimensions: task completion across professional domains and environmental robustness under controlled fault injection (explicit errors, implicit data degradation, and mixed faults). We evaluate 15 frontier models across 8 model families and find that: (1) no single model dominates all industries, as each has a distinct occupational capability profile; (2) implicit faults (truncated data, missing fields) are harder than both explicit errors (timeouts, 500s) and mixed faults, because they lack overt error signals and require the agent to independently detect data degradation; (3) larger models, newer generations, and higher reasoning effort consistently improve performance. GPT-5.2 improves by 27.5 points from minimal to maximum reasoning effort; and (4) strong agents are not necessarily strong environment simulators. Simulator quality is critical for LES-based evaluation reliability. OccuBench provides the first systematic cross-industry evaluation of AI agents on professional occupational tasks.

    28 min
  6. 14H AGO

    Memory Transfer Learning: How Memories are Transferred Across Domains in Coding Agents

    🤗 Upvotes: 24 | cs.AI, cs.CL Authors: Kangsan Kim, Minki Kang, Taeil Kim, Yanlai Yang, Mengye Ren, Sung Ju Hwang Title: Memory Transfer Learning: How Memories are Transferred Across Domains in Coding Agents Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.14004v1 Abstract: Memory-based self-evolution has emerged as a promising paradigm for coding agents. However, existing approaches typically restrict memory utilization to homogeneous task domains, failing to leverage the shared infrastructural foundations, such as runtime environments and programming languages, that exist across diverse real-world coding problems. To address this limitation, we investigate \textbf{Memory Transfer Learning} (MTL) by harnessing a unified memory pool from heterogeneous domains. We evaluate performance across 6 coding benchmarks using four memory representations, ranging from concrete traces to abstract insights. Our experiments demonstrate that cross-domain memory improves average performance by 3.7\%, primarily by transferring meta-knowledge, such as validation routines, rather than task-specific code. Importantly, we find that abstraction dictates transferability; high-level insights generalize well, whereas low-level traces often induce negative transfer due to excessive specificity. Furthermore, we show that transfer effectiveness scales with the size of the memory pool, and memory can be transferred even between different models. Our work establishes empirical design principles for expanding memory utilization beyond single-domain silos. Project page: https://memorytransfer.github.io/

    26 min
  7. 14H AGO

    From $P(y|x)$ to $P(y)$: Investigating Reinforcement Learning in Pre-train Space

    🤗 Upvotes: 23 | cs.LG, cs.AI, cs.CL Authors: Yuqiao Tan, Minzheng Wang, Bo Liu, Zichen Liu, Tian Liang, Shizhu He, Jun Zhao, Kang Liu Title: From $P(y|x)$ to $P(y)$: Investigating Reinforcement Learning in Pre-train Space Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.14142v1 Abstract: While reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) significantly enhances LLM reasoning by optimizing the conditional distribution P(y|x), its potential is fundamentally bounded by the base model's existing output distribution. Optimizing the marginal distribution P(y) in the Pre-train Space addresses this bottleneck by encoding reasoning ability and preserving broad exploration capacity. Yet, conventional pre-training relies on static corpora for passive learning, leading to a distribution shift that hinders targeted reasoning enhancement. In this paper, we introduce PreRL (Pre-train Space RL), which applies reward-driven online updates directly to P(y). We theoretically and empirically validate the strong gradient alignment between log P(y) and log P(y|x), establishing PreRL as a viable surrogate for standard RL. Furthermore, we uncover a critical mechanism: Negative Sample Reinforcement (NSR) within PreRL serves as an exceptionally effective driver for reasoning. NSR-PreRL rapidly prunes incorrect reasoning spaces while stimulating endogenous reflective behaviors, increasing transition and reflection thoughts by 14.89x and 6.54x, respectively. Leveraging these insights, we propose Dual Space RL (DSRL), a Policy Reincarnation strategy that initializes models with NSR-PreRL to expand the reasoning horizon before transitioning to standard RL for fine-grained optimization. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DSRL consistently outperforms strong baselines, proving that pre-train space pruning effectively steers the policy toward a refined correct reasoning subspace.

    24 min
  8. 14H AGO

    Exploration and Exploitation Errors Are Measurable for Language Model Agents

    🤗 Upvotes: 22 | cs.AI Authors: Jaden Park, Jungtaek Kim, Jongwon Jeong, Robert D. Nowak, Kangwook Lee, Yong Jae Lee Title: Exploration and Exploitation Errors Are Measurable for Language Model Agents Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13151v1 Abstract: Language Model (LM) agents are increasingly used in complex open-ended decision-making tasks, from AI coding to physical AI. A core requirement in these settings is the ability to both explore the problem space and exploit acquired knowledge effectively. However, systematically distinguishing and quantifying exploration and exploitation from observed actions without access to the agent's internal policy remains challenging. To address this, we design controllable environments inspired by practical embodied AI scenarios. Each environment consists of a partially observable 2D grid map and an unknown task Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). The map generation can be programmatically adjusted to emphasize exploration or exploitation difficulty. To enable policy-agnostic evaluation, we design a metric to quantify exploration and exploitation errors from agent's actions. We evaluate a variety of frontier LM agents and find that even state-of-the-art models struggle on our task, with different models exhibiting distinct failure modes. We further observe that reasoning models solve the task more effectively and show both exploration and exploitation can be significantly improved through minimal harness engineering. We release our code \href{https://github.com/jjj-madison/measurable-explore-exploit}{here}.

    22 min

About

We update every weekday to discuss highest-voted papers from Huggingface Daily Paper (https://huggingface.co/papers). Both the podcast scripts and audio are generated by AI. Feedback and suggestions are welcome! Email us: dailypapercast.ai@gmail.com Creator: Jingwen Liang, 3D ML, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jingwen-liang/ Gengyu Wang, LLM ML, http://wanggengyu.com Listen on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/21nrhmdaA8qoBiH8q03NXL Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daily-paper-cast/id1777620236 Cover Image by Kawen Kuang https://kawen.art