arXiv:2609.12599v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multi-task learning (MTL) requires navigating unavoidable trade-offs among competing objectives. This paradigm is frequently formulated as multi-objective optimization (MOO), where the scalarization is favored to reduce an MOO problem to a single objective. We empirically find that existing merit-function-based scalarization approaches are sensitive to the relative scales of different objectives in practical MTL, where task losses commonly differ by orders of magnitude. The optimization process often favors objectives with larger scales even though the underlying Pareto optimal solutions remains invariant to rescaling (i.e., multiplying an objective by a positive constant). To address this issue, we propose Scale-Invariant Merit-function-based Scalarization (SIMS) for MTL. Specifically, SIMS adopts a transformation-induced merit function to convert the MOO problem of MTL to a single objective that renders optimization invariant to the magnitudes of losses. Theoretically, we prove that the requirement for scale invariance uniquely determines this transformation to be logarithmic. We further show that this general transformation-induced merit function preserves weak Pareto optimality and admits a smooth surrogate with controllable approximation error. Extensive experiments on representative multi-task benchmarks demonstrate that SIMS consistently outperforms existing scalarization methods and achieves state-of-the-art performance.

arXiv:2609.10992v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The integration of Large Language Models into daily tasks relies on context-rich instructions, inevitably exposing sensitive user information. Current privacy-preserving methods typically employ context-agnostic static rules, causing severe utility degradation. However, the specific mechanisms governing how sanitization impacts downstream performance remain largely underexplored. To address this, we conduct a systematic analysis to deconstruct the privacy-utility trade-off, uncovering three underlying mechanisms: (1) Context-Dependent Utility, which first establishes when to sanitize by revealing that data value shifts from critical constraints to dispensable noise based on user intent; (2) Strategic Adaptation, which subsequently determines how to sanitize by dictating that the choice between removal and replacement depends on the task's reliance on factual integrity versus structural coherence; and (3) Combinatorial Interplay, which finally extends the protection scope by demonstrating that attributes form a semantic web of synergistic dependencies or antagonistic redundancies. Guided by these insights, we introduce an intent-driven local protection framework. By distilling a lightweight model Veilmind-4B to drive a dynamic extraction-sanitization-restoration pipeline, our approach reaches a low-leakage privacy point while preserving substantially higher response utility than existing privacy-oriented baselines, advancing the privacy-utility trade-off toward the Pareto frontier.

arXiv:2609.01210v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Safety benchmarks for large language models often assess the risk of a user query, although the outcome of question answering depends on whether the response violates a policy. This distinction is critical in Chinese harmful-content evaluation, where linguistic variation and adversarial transformations can obscure risky intent. We introduce C-SafeQA, a policy-grounded benchmark for response-level Chinese safety evaluation. It comprises 538 base queries and 8,877 adversarial queries answered by four full-model LLM deployments, yielding 37,660 query-response records labeled safe, unsafe, or disputed. Reference labels are generated through agreement-aware multi-model adjudication and blind audits of stratified subsets by three safety experts. C-SafeQA supports both evaluation of target-model safety and auditing of seven automated safety judges against shared reference labels. Unsafe-response rates range from 0.93% to 3.35% on base queries and from 11.68% to 30.05% on adversarial queries. On the adversarial subset, judges show substantial trade-offs between unsafe-response recall and risk-query-conditioned safe-response false positive rate, and no judge dominates all metrics. Both acrostic transformations reduce unsafe recall for all seven judges, revealing mechanism-specific evaluator weaknesses. Dataset records, metadata, verification code, and judge scripts are publicly released to support recomputation, while benchmark construction, target-response generation, and private adjudication remain outside the release boundary.

arXiv:2602.13685v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) excel at perception but struggle with complex reasoning requiring precise acoustic measurements. While external tools can extract fine-grained features like exact tempo or pitch, effective integration remains challenging: naively using all tools causes information overload, while prompt-based selection fails to assess context-dependent utility. To address this, we propose AuTAgent (Audio Tool Agent), a reinforcement learning framework that learns when and which tools to invoke. By employing a sparse-feedback training strategy with a novel Differential Reward mechanism, the agent learns to filter out irrelevant tools and invokes external assistance only when it yields a net performance gain over the base model. Experimental results confirm that AuTAgent complements the representation bottleneck of LALMs by providing verifiable acoustic evidence. It improves accuracy by 4.20% / 6.20% and 9.80% / 8.00% for open-source and closed-source backbones on the MMAU Test-mini and the MMAR benchmarks, respectively. In addition, further experiments demonstrate exceptional transferability. We highlight the complementary role of external tools in augmenting audio model reasoning.