arXiv subjects

Yansong Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Yansong Zhang.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Heads, Not Backbones: Output Heads Dominate Architectures on Fat-Tailed Returns

In a deep forecasting pipeline for fat-tailed financial returns at short horizons, which matters more - the backbone architecture or the output head? We compare four modern backbones (TimesNet, DLinear, N-BEATS, iTransformer) under three output heads: a point head, a single-Gaussian density head, and a Gaussian mixture density head with K=4 components. On S and P 500 monthly log-returns (1871-2023) under anchored walk-forward validation, the three heads form a strict gradient: switching from point to Gaussian improves CRPS by about 1.3 percent; switching from Gaussian to mixture adds a further about 2.4 percent. Switching between backbones, in contrast, changes CRPS by less than 1.5 percent on the point-head row and on the backbone-mean axis; density-head backbone spread is larger (up to 5.1 percent on the h=1 Gaussian row, driven by N-BEATS) but the head gradient (3.7 percentage points) still dominates. The Model Confidence Set on squared errors does not exclude any of the 12 variants at the 5 percent level: the head separates them only on distributional metrics (CRPS, pinball, coverage), not on squared error. The mixture head incremental value over a single Gaussian is largest in the highest-volatility regimes (13.9 percent in 1970s stagflation at h=12), confirming the mixture captures tail risk beyond what a unimodal Gaussian can express. The picture is horizon-dependent: the head dominates at short horizons, but at long horizons (h >= 6) the backbone re-takes the lead - an h-split we document against classical baselines (section 5.1). We conclude that on fat-tailed returns at short horizons, the head dominates the backbone, and the mixture distribution adds genuine value over a single Gaussian during crisis periods when risk-management decisions actually matter.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

From Frame-Level Recognition to Event-Level Confirmation: Repair Traces and Runtime Failure Analysis of Public-Space Gesture Interaction

Public-space gesture interaction is often evaluated as a frame-level recognition problem, but deployed systems expose a different failure boundary. In scenic kiosks, exhibition halls, and service terminals, users experience whether an intended action becomes a stable interaction event, not whether individual hand-landmark frames are correct. We call this the recognition-to-interaction gap. This paper analyzes 8 engineering repair records from a scenic-area interactive kiosk project, covering 4 gesture tasks: two-hand bowing, single-hand fist shaking, two-hand catching control, and knowledge-graph node hovering. From these traces, we extract 20 failure instances and organize them into six non-exclusive working failure classes: model-output degeneration, temporal mismatch, geometric-scale instability, coordinate-rendering mismatch, runtime lifecycle failure, and feedback synchronization and recovery failure. We further organize recurring repair mechanisms into an event-level runtime abstraction between the hand-landmark model and the interaction task. The contribution is deliberately bounded: a deployment-grounded failure taxonomy, an event-confirmation runtime abstraction, and case-study findings. We do not claim a new recognition model, large-scale user evaluation, or quantified accuracy gains.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

High-Throughput and Scalable Secure Inference Protocols for Deep Learning with Packed Secret Sharing

Most existing secure neural network inference protocols based on secure multi-party computation (MPC) typically support at most four participants, demonstrating severely limited scalability. Liu et al. (USENIX Security'24) presented the first relatively practical approach by utilizing Shamir secret sharing with Mersenne prime fields. However, when processing deeper neural networks such as VGG16, their protocols incur substantial communication overhead, resulting in particularly significant latency in wide-area network (WAN) environments. In this paper, we propose a high-throughput and scalable MPC protocol for neural network inference against semi-honest adversaries in the honest-majority setting. The core of our approach lies in leveraging packed Shamir secret sharing (PSS) to enable parallel computation and reduce communication complexity. The main contributions are three-fold: i) We present a communication-efficient protocol for vector-matrix multiplication, based on our newly defined notion of vector-matrix multiplication-friendly random share tuples. ii) We design the filter packing approach that enables parallel convolution. iii) We further extend all non-linear protocols based on Shamir secret sharing to the PSS-based protocols for achieving parallel non-linear operations. Extensive experiments across various datasets and neural networks demonstrate the superiority of our approach in WAN. Compared to Liu et al. (USENIX Security'24), our scheme reduces the communication upto 5.85x, 11.17x, and 6.83x in offline, online and total communication overhead, respectively. In addition, our scheme is upto 1.59x, 2.61x, and 1.75x faster in offline, online and total running time, respectively.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2026

MemEmo: Evaluating Emotion in Memory Systems of Agents

Memory systems address the challenge of context loss in Large Language Model during prolonged interactions. However, compared to human cognition, the efficacy of these systems in processing emotion-related information remains inconclusive. To address this gap, we propose an emotion-enhanced memory evaluation benchmark to assess the performance of mainstream and state-of-the-art memory systems in handling affective information. We developed the \textbf{H}uman-\textbf{L}ike \textbf{M}emory \textbf{E}motion (\textbf{HLME}) dataset, which evaluates memory systems across three dimensions: emotional information extraction, emotional memory updating, and emotional memory question answering. Experimental results indicate that none of the evaluated systems achieve robust performance across all three tasks. Our findings provide an objective perspective on the current deficiencies of memory systems in processing emotional memories and suggest a new trajectory for future research and system optimization.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2022

Rational Uniform Consensus with General Omission Failures

Generally, system failures, such as crash failures, Byzantine failures and so on, are considered as common reasons for the inconsistencies of distributed consensus and have been extensively studied. In fact, strategic manipulations by rational agents do not be ignored for reaching consensus in distributed system. In this paper, we extend the game-theoretic analysis of consensus and design an algorithm of rational uniform consensus with general omission failures under the assumption that processes are controlled by rational agents and prefer consensus. Different from crashing one, agent with omission failures may crash, or omit to send or receive messages when it should, which leads to difficulty of detecting faulty agents. By combining the possible failures of agents at the both ends of a link, we convert omission failure model into link state model to make faulty detection possible. Through analyzing message passing mechanism in the distributed system with n agents, among which t agents may commit omission failures, we provide the upper bound on message passing time for reaching consensus on a state among nonfaulty agents, and message chain mechanism for validating messages. And then we prove our rational uniform consensus is a Nash equilibrium when n>2t+1, and failure patterns and initial preferences are blind (an assumption of randomness). Thus agents could have no motivation to deviate the consensus. Our research strengthens the reliability of consensus with omission failures from the perspective of game theory.

cs.GT↗