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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

Boomerang Distillation Enables Zero-Shot Model Size Interpolation

October 29, 2025
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.

Blog List

2025

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.

  • Project
  • Paper
  • Code
7 October 2025

Using Cognitive Models to Reveal Value Trade-offs in Language Models

By: Sonia Murthy and Peng Qian

The authors use a leading cognitive model of value trade-off in polite speech to systematically examine how post-training choices like reasoning budget and alignment recipes might be affecting value trade-offs in language models.

  • Preprint
4 August 2025

ANN-like Synapses in the Brain Mediate Online Reinforcement Learning

By: Shun Li

The authors show that a type of synapses in the brain challenges a long-held assumption about synaptic plasticity rules. These synapses switch between more excitatory and more inhibitory in an experience-dependent manner, and contribute to online dopamine updates during reinforcement learning.

  • Preprint
30 July 2025

Accelerating RL for LLM Reasoning with Optimal Advantage Regression

By: Zhaolin Gao

Gao and collaborators propose a new RL algorithm that estimates the optimal value function offline from the reference policy and performs on-policy updates using only one generation per prompt.

  • Preprint
  • GitHub
28 July 2025

Solvable Model of In-Context Learning Using Linear Attention

By: Mary Letey

This work provides a sharp characterization of in-context learning (ICL) in an analytically-solvable model, which offers insights into the sample complexity and data quality requirements for ICL to happen. These insights can be applied to more complex, realistic architectures.

  • Paper
  • Code
22 July 2025

Flow Equivariant Recurrent Neural Networks

By: T. Anderson Keller

The author introduces the first flow equivariant models that respect motion symmetries, leading to significantly improved generalization and sequence modeling.

  • Preprint
  • Code
18 July 2025

The Hidden Linear Structure in Diffusion Models and its Application in Analytical Teleportation

By: Binxu Wang and John J. Vastola

Diffusion models are powerful generative frameworks that iteratively denoise white noise into structured data via learned score functions. Through theory and experiments, the authors demonstrate that these score functions are dominated by a linear Gaussian component.

  • Preprint
  • OpenReview
14 July 2025

Scaling Offline Reinforcement Learning at Test Time

By: Nicolas Espinosa-Dice

Kempner researchers present a new algorithm for offline reinforcement learning that features a key property: self-consistency.

  • Preprint
  • Code
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