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Kimon Fountoulakis

@kfountou.bsky.social
1.1K followers 87 following 149 posts

Associate Professor at CS UWaterloo Machine Learning Lab: opallab.ca

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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
On the Statistical Query Complexity of Learning Semiautomata: a Random Walk Approach Link to the paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.04115
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
I wrote a blog post about it. Link: medium.com/@kimon.fount...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
New paper: Learning to Add, Multiply, and Execute Algorithmic Instructions Exactly with Neural Networks
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
Update, 14 empirical papers added!
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
The SIAM Conference on Optimization 2026 will be in Edinburgh! I don’t really work on optimization anymore (at least not directly), but it’s cool to see a major optimization conference taking place where I did my PhD.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
Currently NeurIPS has 21390 submissions. The final number last year was 15671. Observation made by my student George Giapitzakis.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Got a pin this morning Einstein problem: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstei...
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Jason Lee @jasondeanlee.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Our new work on scaling laws that includes compute, model size, and number of samples. The analysis involves an extremely fine-grained analysis of online sgd built up over the last 8 years of understanding sgd on simple toy models (tensors, single index models, multi index model)
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Hey, I definitely predicted this correctly.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
ChatGPT gives me the ability to expand my search capabilities on topics that I can only roughly describe, or even illustrate with a figure, when I don’t know the exact keywords to use in a Google search.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Positional Attention is accepted at ICML 2025! Thanks to all co-authors for the hard work (64 pages). If you’d like to read the paper, check the quoted post.
arxiv.org
Positional Attention: Expressivity and Learnability of Algorithmic Computation
There is a growing interest in the ability of neural networks to execute algorithmic tasks (e.g., arithmetic, summary statistics, and sorting). The goal of this work is to better understand the role o...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
NeurIPS 2026 in the Cyclades. Just saying.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
I enjoyed reading the paper "A Generalized Neural Tangent Kernel for Surrogate Gradient Learning" (Spotlight, NeurIPS 2024). They extend the NTK framework to activation functions that have finitely many jumps.
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Waterloo's David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science @uwcheritoncs.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
✍️ Code Shaping, an AI-powered software, allows users to edit their code through sketches like diagrams and graphs 📈 🏆 This game-changing platform won the Best Paper Award at #CHI2025. 🔗Read more: uwaterloo.ca/computer-sci... #UWaterloo #AI
uwaterloo.ca
New AI model turns sketches into code | Cheriton School of Computer Science | University of Waterloo
Co-developed by alum Ryan Yen, Code Shaping can transform coding beyond the keyboard.
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Aleksandros Sobczyk @asobczyk.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
With my first Bluesky post, I am very pleased to share that my last PhD paper "Deterministic complexity analysis of Hermitian eigenproblems" has been accepted in ICALP 2025. A preprint is available on Arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2410.21550 A bit more info on linkedin: www.linkedin.com/posts/aleksa...
arxiv.org
Deterministic complexity analysis of Hermitian eigenproblems
In this work we revisit the arithmetic and bit complexity of Hermitian eigenproblems. We first provide an analysis for the divide-and-conquer tridiagonal eigensolver of Gu and Eisenstat [GE95] in the ...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
Update "Memory Augmented Large Language Models are Computationally Universal", Dale Schuurmans link: arxiv.org/abs/2301.04589
arxiv.org
Memory Augmented Large Language Models are Computationally Universal
We show that transformer-based large language models are computationally universal when augmented with an external memory. Any deterministic language model that conditions on strings of bounded length...
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Reposted by Kimon Fountoulakis
Alex Dimakis @alexdimakis.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
Excited to be part of Greeksin.ai
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
Shenghao's Ph.D Thesis "Perspectives of Graph Diffusion: Computation, Local Partitioning, Statistical Recovery, and Applications" is now available. Link: dspacemainprd01.lib.uwaterloo.ca/server/api/c... Relevant papers: 1) Local Graph Clustering with Noisy Labels (ICLR 2024)
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
I am still surprised by how difficult it is to train a 2-layer MLP to simply learn to copy or permute the input exactly. If k is the input length, the result below provides a (seemingly tight) upper bound of O(k²) training trials.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
New additions 1. Graph neural networks extrapolate out-of-distribution for shortest paths. arxiv.org/abs/2503.19173 2. Round and Round We Go! What makes Rotary Positional Encodings useful?. ICLR 2025. openreview.net/forum?id=Gtv...
arxiv.org
Graph neural networks extrapolate out-of-distribution for shortest paths
Neural networks (NNs), despite their success and wide adoption, still struggle to extrapolate out-of-distribution (OOD), i.e., to inputs that are not well-represented by their training dataset. Addres...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
Our second kid arrived!
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Max Thiessen @maxthiessen.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
GLOW is returning on 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝟮𝟲𝘁𝗵, 𝟱𝗽𝗺 𝗖𝗘𝗧 with a special guest: @petar-v.bsky.social 🌟 He will lecture on LLMs as GNNs – a topic which received quite some attention at our last session. Specifically, we will learn how Graph ML tools can help understand LLM generalisation
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
1 out of 12 papers in my batch at ICML has a score above 3 (weak acceptance). Each paper has at least 3 reviews.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
Computational Capability and Efficiency of Neural Networks: A Repository of Papers I compiled a list of theoretical papers related to the computational capabilities of Transformers, recurrent networks, feedforward networks, and graph neural networks. Link: github.com/opallab/neur...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
Every time I try to use chatGPT or Gemini to write some text for me, I always get vague results. This is not useful. It can't be creative. I don't know why people talk about it as if it actually produces knowledge. Even if I initially think it's helpful, I end up rewriting the entire text because,
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
Given the recent trend in RL and the Turing Award to RL, you might also be interested in reading "Intelligent Machinery" by A. M. Turing from 1948, where he planted the seeds for RL and discussed the ability of computers to learn from their environment. Link: weightagnostic.github.io/papers/turin...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Can neural networks learn to copy or permute an input exactly with high probability? We study this basic and fundamental question in "Exact Learning of Permutations for Nonzero Binary Inputs with Logarithmic Training Size and Quadratic Ensemble Complexity" Link: arxiv.org/abs/2502.16763
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Max Thiessen @maxthiessen.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
GLOW is back this Wednesday, Feb 19th, 5pm CET 🌟 Instead of talks, we’re hosting a casual discussion on where graph learning is headed and where early-career researchers can make the most impact. Join our open conversation with junior and senior graph researchers! sites.google.com/view/graph-l...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Cool paper: Theoretical limitations of multi-layer Transformer, spotted by Shenghao Yang. link: arxiv.org/abs/2412.02975
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Adam Johansen @adamjohansen.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
Registration is now open for the 2nd RSS/Turing Workshop on Gradient Flows for Sampling, Inference, and Learning at rss.org.uk/training-eve.... Date: Monday 24 March 2025, 10.00AM - 5.00PM Location: The Alan Turing Institute
rss.org.uk
2nd RSS/Turing Workshop on Gradient Flows for Sampling, Inference, and Learning
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Positional Attention: Expressivity and Learnability of Algorithmic Computation (v2) We study the effect of using only fixed positional encodings in the Transformer architecture for computational tasks. These positional encodings remain the same across layers.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
I am wondering what percentage of reviewers, who are also authors at the same conference, received positive feedback for their paper and then changed their opinion about a (multiple) paper(s) they reviewed during the rebuttal.
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Constantine Caramanis @cmcaram.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
🚀 🇬🇷 A year in the making! I’ve just completed a set of 21 lectures in Machine Learning, in Greek, designed for high school students. The course introduces key ML concepts, coding in Python & PyTorch, and real-world AI applications. 👉 WebPage: tinyurl.com/ye2awe8m 🎥 YouTube: tinyurl.com/2wwjru6z
tinyurl.com
Μηχανική Μάθηση (Machine Learning) - YouTube
Διαλέξεις Τεχνητής Νοημοσύνης και Μηχανικής Μάθησης: https://caramanis.github.io/MachineLearningClass/ Καλωσορίσατε στο μάθημα τεχνητής νοημοσύνης και μηχανι...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
I miss those summer European conferences! I used to attend them as a PhD student, it was always fun!
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
. Shenghao Yang passed his PhD defence today. Shenghao is the second PhD student to graduate from our group. I am very happy for Shenghao and the work that he has done!
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Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Some of my thoughts on OpenAI's o3 and the ARC-AGI benchmark aiguide.substack.com/p/did-openai...
aiguide.substack.com
Did OpenAI Just Solve Abstract Reasoning?
OpenAI’s o3 model aces the "Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus" — but what does it mean?
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
It seems that Finland's Publication Forum (known as JUFO) decided that the review process in journals like MDPI is too fast and unreliable. As a result, they downgraded these journals to the lowest classification: zero. deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/12/finl....
deevybee.blogspot.com
Finland vs. Germany: the case of MDPI
It's been an odd week for the academic publisher MDPI. On 16th December, Finland's Publication Forum (known as JUFO) announced that from J...
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Francis Bach @bachfrancis.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
My book is (at last) out, just in time for Christmas! A blog post to celebrate and present it: francisbach.com/my-book-is-o...
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Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 20/12/2024
ICML 2025 has some exciting changes. Here are two of my favorites. 1. Only 1 round of back-and-forth between authors & reviewers. The review process should not be an endless back and forth. It shouldn't be possible to get your paper accepted by exhausting reviewers.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
On this day, 6 years ago, we started a road trip from Berkeley to Waterloo. It lasted 8 days, and we passed through California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
The first major breakthrough in AI occurred in the field of images, driven by the availability of large amounts of labeled image data. Then, it extended to text, thanks to the abundance of "labeled" internet data. It's hard to imagine a larger generic dataset.
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Thatchaphol Saranurak @eigx.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
A nice lecture series on graph theory www.youtube.com/@DiestelGrap...
youtube.com
Reinhard Diestel: Graph theory lectures
These videos are live recordings, minimally edited, of 56 lectures on graph theory that I gave at Hamburg University in 2023/24. They are based on the 6th edition of my Graph Theory book, which is ava...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Robert Wang is presenting his work at #NeurIPS2024 "Analysis of Corrected Graph Convolutions". Date/time: Fri 13 Dec 11 a.m. PST — 2 p.m. PST. link: openreview.net/pdf?id=MSsQD...
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Aseem's thesis, "Statistical Foundations for Learning on Graphs", is available on UWSpace. link: uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/items/291d10...
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Dan Roy @roydanroy.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Link: arxiv.org/abs/2412.024...
arxiv.org
Artificial Expert Intelligence through PAC-reasoning
Artificial Expert Intelligence (AEI) seeks to transcend the limitations of both Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and narrow AI by integrating domain-specific expertise with critical, precise reas...
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Ahmad Beirami @abeirami.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
Dear #ICLR authors: As the discussion period comes to an end, please consider writing a 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐞, accurate, and clear summary of the rebuttal and discussion period for the reviewers/AC/SAC to ground the next phase of the decision making.
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Kimon Fountoulakis @kfountou.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
LVLM-COUNT: Enhancing the Counting Ability of Large Vision-Language Models By splitting the image into sub-images using a novel object-aware division technique, we can enhance the performance of LVLMs such as GPT-4o and Gemini Pro 1.5. Link: arxiv.org/abs/2412.00686
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Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
*AI for Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science*, a workshop hosted jointly by the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing and the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute, will be held in Berkeley at April 7-11, 2025. simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/si...
simons.berkeley.edu
Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing and SLMath Joint Workshop: AI for Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science
This is an exciting time for mathematics, as new technologies for mathematical reasoning provide novel opportunities for mathematical research, communication, and discovery. Mathlib, a library of form...
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