arXiv subjects

Dmitry Zaytsev

Publications and source records attributed to Dmitry Zaytsev.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Two-sided receptivity to conversational AI agents in online dating: Bilingual survey data from Fledge.Love

Autonomous conversational agents and generative-AI features are being added to online dating platforms faster than public evidence about user attitudes can accumulate, and the scarcest evidence concerns the receiving side: how people react when the profiles, messages, or conversation partners they encounter are machine-generated. We release two anonymized survey datasets collected from active users of Fledge.Love, a dating platform serving an international user base. The first (N = 2,617; Russian and English forms) measures receptivity to autonomous conversational agents with a seven-item battery that separates the principal role (deploying one's own agent) from the counterpart role (encountering someone else's), plus six ordinal covariates and two auxiliary items. The second (N = 2,894) measures interest in three passive generative-AI features. The release includes model-derived scores for 2,499 complete cases, a bilingual codebook, a documented anonymization pipeline with a k-anonymity audit, executable analysis notebooks, and canonical outputs, supporting reuse in human-AI communication, recommender-systems, and cross-cultural technology-acceptance research.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2026

Delegation Asymmetry in Agentic Recommender Systems: Measuring Two-Sided Receptivity in Online Dating

Autonomous LLM agents that converse on a user's behalf are an emerging design pattern in matching platforms, yet their viability depends on a condition rarely examined: users must accept not only delegating conversation to an agent, but also receiving agent-mediated communication from others. We study this condition using two large-scale surveys of active users of a major dating platform (N=2,894 on generative profile features; N=2,617 on autonomous conversational agents, fielded in two languages). We develop a latent-variable measurement model of agent receptivity based on graded response models with latent regression, and show via model comparison that willingness to send and willingness to receive agent communication are distinct constructs: highly correlated (rho=0.92) but separable (Delta BIC=52), with partial measurement invariance across languages. The model quantifies a systematic delegation asymmetry: deploying one's own agent requires far lower receptivity (threshold -0.38) than engaging a counterpart's agent (+0.32; full engagement +1.39), and mean deployment propensity exceeds engagement propensity roughly threefold. Under a random-pairing counterfactual derived from stated receptivity, only 4-13% of directed dyads combine agent deployment with receiver engagement, with a pronounced gender-directional imbalance. Design counterfactuals quantify the levers: a reciprocity requirement cuts interaction volume by half or more by excluding nearly two-thirds of would-be deployment, while routing agent contacts on receive receptivity triples per-contact engagement, a lift that survives out-of-sample validation with the target item held out (AUC 0.88, 3.1x quartile lift under respondent-level cross-validation). We discuss implications for agentic recommender design, including disclosure, opt-in mechanics, and receptivity-aware matchmaking.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

When Are Neural Interaction Discoveries Real? Identifiability, Recoverability, and a Pre-Fit Diagnostic

When a neural time-series model reports that one variable modulates another's effect on a target, is the discovered interaction a property of the data or an artifact of model flexibility? We argue that this is fundamentally a question of identifiability, governed by the geometry of the observed input support rather than by the specific neural architecture. We study the problem in a multiplicative-gating extension of neural additive vector autoregression (GNAVAR), in which source contributions are modulated by other lagged variables. We show that representational capacity is not identifiability: dependent inputs induce leakage between edge-specific interaction terms, and low-dimensional support permits distinct interaction decompositions that agree on the observed data while differing elsewhere. We then prove a population identifiability theorem for normalized minimal GNAVAR decompositions under explicit support conditions, including settings with shared modulators. The theory yields a simple practitioner-facing diagnostic: the effective rank of the joint lag-block covariance predicts, before fitting, whether interaction recovery is feasible for a given candidate set. When the candidate set is unknown, a two-seed stability check provides a practical operational test. The same support condition organizes empirical outcomes into the three states predicted by the theory. Our results show that interaction recoverability depends on support geometry, that effective rank provides a practical pre-fit diagnostic, and that instability across independent fits is a characteristic signature of non-identifiable interaction discovery. The identifiability phenomenon, the support condition, and the instability signature are model-agnostic; GNAVAR is the vehicle that makes them provable.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

Trajectory-Aware Node Contributions and the Limits of Static Controllability

A recurring data mining task in complex networks is to determine how individual nodes contribute to system behavior. Existing approaches rely on either static-graph centralities or control-theoretic quantities such as controllability Gramians, which assume linear, time-invariant dynamics. Estimated systems, however, are typically nonlinear and time-varying. We define "emergent contribution (EC)," a finite-horizon measure of a node's dynamical leverage: the metric-weighted energy of its impulse response accumulated along the system trajectory. Computed from the Jacobians of any differentiable model, EC is estimator-agnostic and reduces exactly to average controllability in the linear, time-invariant limit. Our contribution is a characterization of when the two measures agree and diverge. Using a controlled synthetic family with known ground-truth contribution, we construct a phase diagram spanning nonlinearity, regime structure, persistence, and perturbation amplitude. EC and average controllability agree under static or smoothly drifting dynamics and both track ground truth. Divergence emerges under persistent regime switching, is strongest under persistent sign reversal, and disappears when the sign reversal is removed. At extreme perturbation amplitudes, both measures degrade, identifying the limits of local linearization. We place five estimated real systems from several domains within this phase space. Their placement serves as a diagnostic of when EC provides information beyond static controllability and therefore justifies its additional computational cost. On one panel examined in depth, a twenty-seed retraining ensemble reveals a robust variance--leverage dissociation: nodes whose perturbations propagate widely despite low within-system variance, which is not recovered by static centralities nor variance-based summaries.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2026

Function-Valued Causal Influence in Nonlinear Time Series

Causal discovery in time series is increasingly performed using nonlinear machine-learning models, yet the resulting causal relationships are almost always summarized by scalar edge scores. We argue that this practice obscures the true object learned by nonlinear autoregressive models: a state-dependent function whose effect varies across regimes, magnitudes, and contexts. We formalize function-valued causal influence for additive, contribution-decomposable architectures and show that scalar causal scores constitute a severe information bottleneck, conflating between-state variation with within-state residual noise. Using Neural Additive Vector Autoregression as a representative architecture, we introduce a practical framework based on Individual Conditional Expectation for estimating causal response functions directly from trained models. Through controlled synthetic experiments, we demonstrate that edges with indistinguishable scalar scores can exhibit qualitatively different functional behaviors, including monotonic, thresholded, saturating, and sign-changing effects. An applied case study on democratic development further shows that function-valued analysis reveals regime-specific and asymmetric causal structure systematically missed by score-centric approaches.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

Trajectory-Aware Reliability Modeling of Democratic Systems

Failures in complex systems often emerge through gradual degradation and the propagation of stress across interacting components rather than through isolated shocks. Democratic systems exhibit similar dynamics, where weakening institutions can trigger cascading deterioration in related institutional structures. Traditional reliability and survival models typically estimate failure risk based on the current system state but do not explicitly capture how degradation propagates through institutional networks over time. This paper introduces a trajectory-aware reliability modeling framework based on Dynamic Causal Neural Autoregression (DCNAR). The framework first estimates a causal interaction structure among institutional indicators and then models their joint temporal evolution to generate forward trajectories of system states. Failure risk is defined as the probability that predicted trajectories cross predefined degradation thresholds within a fixed horizon. Using longitudinal institutional indicators, we compare DCNAR-based trajectory risk models with discrete-time hazard and Cox proportional hazards models. Results show that trajectory-aware modeling consistently outperforms Cox models and improves risk prediction for several propagation-driven institutional failures. These findings highlight the importance of modeling dynamic system interactions for reliability analysis and early detection of systemic degradation.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

Learning AI Without a STEM Background: Mixed-Methods Evidence from a Diverse, Mixed-Cohort AIED Program

Despite growing interest in AI education, most AIED initiatives remain narrowly targeted toward STEM-prepared students, limiting participation by non-STEM learners and adults seeking to engage with AI in public-interest, policy, or workforce contexts. This paper presents and evaluates an NSF-funded, innovative mixed-cohort AI education model that intentionally integrates non-STEM undergraduates and adult learners into a shared learning environment centered on ethical reasoning, socio-technical judgment, and applied AI literacy rather than technical proficiency alone. Drawing on mixed-methods data from course surveys, open-ended reflections, and educator reports, we examine learners' academic agency, confidence navigating AI concepts, critical engagement with ethical tradeoffs, and perceived expansion of postsecondary and career trajectories. Quantitative results indicate significant gains in confidence and perceived relevance of AI across cohorts' participants, while qualitative analyses reveal a consistent emphasis on responsibility, judgment, and contextual reasoning over technical mastery. Instructors and near-peer mentors corroborated high levels of engagement and productive challenge, particularly in dialogic and scenario-based learning activities. Our findings suggest that human-centered instructional supports, such as ethical scaffolding, mentorship, and structured discussion, are essential components of equitable AI education, especially in heterogeneous and non-traditional learner populations. We argue that ethical judgment should be treated as a core learning outcome in AIED alongside AI literacy, and we offer design implications for expanding access to AI education in policy-relevant and workforce-adjacent contexts.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2026

From Causal Discovery to Dynamic Causal Inference in Neural Time Series

Time-varying causal models provide a powerful framework for studying dynamic scientific systems, yet most existing approaches assume that the underlying causal network is known a priori - an assumption rarely satisfied in real-world domains where causal structure is uncertain, evolving, or only indirectly observable. This limits the applicability of dynamic causal inference in many scientific settings. We propose Dynamic Causal Network Autoregression (DCNAR), a two-stage neural causal modeling framework that integrates data-driven causal discovery with time-varying causal inference. In the first stage, a neural autoregressive causal discovery model learns a sparse directed causal network from multivariate time series. In the second stage, this learned structure is used as a structural prior for a time-varying neural network autoregression, enabling dynamic estimation of causal influence without requiring pre-specified network structure. We evaluate the scientific validity of DCNAR using behavioral diagnostics that assess causal necessity, temporal stability, and sensitivity to structural change, rather than predictive accuracy alone. Experiments on multi-country panel time-series data demonstrate that learned causal networks yield more stable and behaviorally meaningful dynamic causal inferences than coefficient-based or structure-free alternatives, even when forecasting performance is comparable. These results position DCNAR as a general framework for using AI as a scientific instrument for dynamic causal reasoning under structural uncertainty.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Lipschitz-Regularized Critics Lead to Policy Robustness Against Transition Dynamics Uncertainty

Uncertainties in transition dynamics pose a critical challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), often resulting in performance degradation of trained policies when deployed on hardware. Many robust RL approaches follow two strategies: enforcing smoothness in actor or actor-critic modules with Lipschitz regularization, or learning robust Bellman operators. However, the first strategy does not investigate the impact of critic-only Lipschitz regularization on policy robustness, while the second lacks comprehensive validation in real-world scenarios. Building on this gap and prior work, we propose PPO-PGDLC, an algorithm based on Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) that integrates Projected Gradient Descent (PGD) with a Lipschitz-regularized critic (LC). The PGD component calculates the adversarial state within an uncertainty set to approximate the robust Bellman operator, and the Lipschitz-regularized critic further improves the smoothness of learned policies. Experimental results on two classic control tasks and one real-world robotic locomotion task demonstrate that, compared to several baseline algorithms, PPO-PGDLC achieves better performance and predicts smoother actions under environmental perturbations.

cs.LG↗