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Deeper Learning

A research blog from the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University.

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Feature Article

Forecasting the Brain: Scalable Neural Prediction with POCO

February 06, 2026
By: Yu Duan and Kanaka Rajan

Predicting future neural activity is a critical step toward achieving real-time, closed-loop neurotechnologies. To this end, we introduce POCO, a unified forecasting model trained on…

Blog List

2026

6 February 2026

Forecasting the Brain: Scalable Neural Prediction with POCO

By: Yu Duan and Kanaka Rajan

Predicting future neural activity is a critical step toward achieving real-time, closed-loop neurotechnologies. To this end, we introduce POCO, a unified forecasting model trained on…

  • Preprint
  • Code
4 February 2026

Anytime Pretraining: Horizon-Free Learning-Rate Schedules with Weight Averaging

By: Alexandru Meterez*, Pranav Ajit Nair*, Depen Morwani*, Cengiz Pehlevan, Sham Kakade

The authors provide a theoretical analysis demonstrating the existence of anytime learning schedules for overparameterized linear regression, and highlight the central role of weight averaging—also known as model merging—in achieving the optimal convergence rates of stochastic gradient descent.

  • Preprint
  • Code
3 February 2026

Measuring and Controlling Solution Degeneracy Across Task-Trained Recurrent Neural Networks

By: Ann Huang and Kanaka Rajan

Despite reaching equal performance success when trained on the same task, artificial neural networks can develop dramatically different internal solutions, much like different students solving the same math problem using completely different approaches. Our study introduces a unified framework to quantify this variability across Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) solutions, which we term solution degeneracy, and analyze what factors shape it across thousands of recurrent networks trained on memory and decision-making tasks.

  • Preprint
26 January 2026

PROTON: A Relational Foundation Model for Neurological Discovery

By: Ayush Noori and Marinka Zitnik

This work introduces a relational foundation model for neurological discovery and evaluates it through discovery loops that connect AI predictions to experiments in Parkinson’s disease, bipolar disorder, and Alzheimer’s disease.

  • PROTON website
  • Paper
  • Code
  • Model
5 January 2026

Large Video Planner: A New Foundation Model for General-Purpose Robots

By: Yilun Du

This work explores using video as the primary modality for robot foundation models. Unlike static images, videos naturally encode physical dynamics and semantics of the world, providing a rich prior for physical decision-making.

  • Preprint
  • Hugging Face
  • Project website

2025

24 November 2025

Into the Rabbit Hull-Part II

From Linear Directions to Convex Geometry

By: Thomas Fel*, Binxu Wang*, Michael A. Lepori, Matthew Kowal, Andrew Lee, Randall Balestriero, Sonia Joseph, Ekdeep S. Lubana, Talia Konkle, Demba Ba, Martin Wattenberg

The authors ask the fundamental question: is the linear view of DINOv2 under the Linear Representation Hypothesis (LRH) sufficient to describe how deep vision models organize information? The authors examine the geometry and statistics of the learned concepts themselves and the results suggest that representations are organized beyond linear sparsity alone.

  • Interactive demo
  • Preprint
12 November 2025

Into the Rabbit Hull – Part I

By: Thomas Fel*, Binxu Wang*, Michael A. Lepori, Matthew Kowal, Andrew Lee, Randall Balestriero, Sonia Joseph, Ekdeep S. Lubana, Talia Konkle, Demba Ba, Martin Wattenberg

The authors offer an interpretability deep dive, examining the most important concepts emerging in one of today’s central vision foundation models, DINOv2.

  • Interactive demo
  • Preprint
29 October 2025

Boomerang Distillation Enables Zero-Shot Model Size Interpolation

By: Sara Kangaslahti, Nihal Nayak, Jonathan Geuter

The authors identify a novel phenomenon, Boomerang Distillation, which occurs when distilling a large language model into a smaller one. In this blog post, they describe how Boomerang Distillation can be used to create entire families of LLMs of fine-grained sizes without any training from a single student-teacher pair.

  • Preprint
  • Code
  • Models
15 October 2025

LOTION: Smoothing the Optimization  Landscape for Quantized Training

By: Mujin Kwun, Nikhil Anand, Depen Morwani

The authorsintroduce LOTION, a framework that optimizes a continuous variant of the quantized loss surface while provably preserving all global minima of the original problem.

  • Preprint
9 October 2025

From Models to Scientists: Building AI Agents for Scientific Discovery

By: Shanghua Gao, Richard Zhu, Marinka Zitnik

ToolUniverse is a framework for developing AI agents for science, often referred to as “AI scientists.” It provides an environment where LLMs interact with more than six hundred scientific tools, including machine learning models, databases, and simulators. ToolUniverse standardizes how AI models access and combine these tools, allowing researchers to develop, test, and evaluate AI agents for science.

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