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Martin Ziqiao Ma

@ziqiao_ma4,520 subscribers

technical staff @thinkymachines; less technical stuff @aclmentorship; phd @umich; views are my own

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The term "continual learning" has become overloaded if you see it as an ML problem. One classic thread is about memorization: regularization-based continual learning methods, such as EWC, MAS, and SI, estimate which parameters mattered for previous tasks and resist changing them too much. One modern thread is about adaptation: test-time training and inference-time learning methods, such as TTT, adapt part of the model on the incoming test stream before making predictions. These are sometimes discussed as separate threads. But in modern scalable architectures, I think they are better seen as complementary constraints: a model that learns quickly at test time also benefits from a mechanism for deciding what not to forget. In our #ECCV2026 paper, we study this in large-scale 4D reconstruction: how to build fast spatial memory that can adapt over long observation streams while reducing collapse and forgetting. Instead of using fully plastic test-time updates, we stabilize fast-weight adaptation with an elastic prior that balances adaptation and memory. Key ideas: - Elastic Test-Time Training: Fisher-weighted consolidation for fast-weight updates - EMA anchor weights that provide a moving reference for stability - Chunk-by-chunk inference for long 3D/4D observation streams We show that this scales across large 3D/4D pretraining settings, including both LRM-style and LVSM-style models, and improves reconstruction across benchmarks including Stereo4D, NVIDIA, and DL3DV-140. We release model checkpoints across different design choices: resolution, post-training curriculum, and whether the model uses an explicit 4DGS intermediate representation. - Homepage: - Paper: - Code: - Models: This work is co-led with Xueyang Yu, contributed by Haoyu Zhen Yuncong Yang, and advised by Michigan SLED Lab Chuang Gan.

The term "continual learning" has become overloaded if you see it as an ML problem. One classic thread is about memorization: regularization-based continual learning methods, such as EWC, MAS, and SI, estimate which parameters mattered for previous tasks and resist changing them too much. One modern thread is about adaptation: test-time training and inference-time learning methods, such as TTT, adapt part of the model on the incoming test stream before making predictions. These are sometimes discussed as separate threads. But in modern scalable architectures, I think they are better seen as complementary constraints: a model that learns quickly at test time also benefits from a mechanism for deciding what not to forget. In our #ECCV2026 paper, we study this in large-scale 4D reconstruction: how to build fast spatial memory that can adapt over long observation streams while reducing collapse and forgetting. Instead of using fully plastic test-time updates, we stabilize fast-weight adaptation with an elastic prior that balances adaptation and memory. Key ideas: - Elastic Test-Time Training: Fisher-weighted consolidation for fast-weight updates - EMA anchor weights that provide a moving reference for stability - Chunk-by-chunk inference for long 3D/4D observation streams We show that this scales across large 3D/4D pretraining settings, including both LRM-style and LVSM-style models, and improves reconstruction across benchmarks including Stereo4D, NVIDIA, and DL3DV-140. We release model checkpoints across different design choices: resolution, post-training curriculum, and whether the model uses an explicit 4DGS intermediate representation. - Homepage: - Paper: - Code: - Models: This work is co-led with Xueyang Yu, contributed by Haoyu Zhen Yuncong Yang, and advised by Michigan SLED Lab Chuang Gan.

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Do Vision-Language Models represent space, and how? Spatial terms like "left" or "right" may not be enough to match images with spatial descriptions, as we often overlook the different frames of reference (FoR) used by speakers and listeners. See Figure 1 for examples! Introducing the COnsistent Multilingual Frame Of Reference Test (COMFORT), an evaluation protocol to assess the spatial reasoning capabilities of VLMs. COMFORT includes systematically designed datasets and metrics that evaluate model performance, and their deeper linguistic competence, specifically the spatial knowledge encoded in their internal representations. Find out more in the video teaser! Almost all VLMs prefer the egocentric relative FoR with reflected transform, similar to English. Yet, we reveal significant shortcomings of VLMs: notably, the models (1) exhibit poor robustness and consistency, (2) lack the flexibility to accommodate multiple FoRs, and (3) fail to adhere to language-specific or culture-specific conventions in cross-lingual tests, as English tends to dominate other languages. A shortened version will appear in Pluralistic Alignment Workshop Pluralistic Alignment Workshop #NeurIPS2024. It seems that the ArXiv moderators put it on hold and are eager to give it a thorough read first🤣! So here is the Paper/Code/Data: This collaboration turns out to be amazing, jointly led by Brian Zheyuan Zhang, @Hu_FY_ Jayjun Lee, with so many contributions and insights from Freda Shi, Parisa Kordjamshidi Michigan SLED Lab. With a growing effort to align vision-language models with human cognitive intuitions, we call for more attention to the ambiguous nature and cross-cultural diversity of spatial reasoning!

Martin Ziqiao Ma

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