{"paper":{"title":"Learning Through Noise: Why Subliminal Learning Works and When It Fails","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Bel\\'en Hidalgo-Ogalde, Roman D. Ventzke, Valentin Neuhaus, Vincent C. Brockers, Viola Priesemann","submitted_at":"2026-05-22T13:59:13Z","abstract_excerpt":"In the context of artificial neural networks, subliminal learning refers to the transfer of task-relevant knowledge or unintended biases from teacher to student models through distillation on task-unrelated input$\\unicode{x2013}$output pairs. Prior explanations tie this effect to shared or closely matched teacher$\\unicode{x2013}$student initialization. We show that a closely matched initialization is not necessary. Instead, subliminal learning is governed by compatible output heads. Using a controlled MNIST setting, we split outputs into an auxiliary head (for auxiliary, task-unrelated noise s"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2605.23645","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.23645/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}