2025年10月14日NLP领域论文汇总(英文)
- Topic 1: Reasoning and Problem Solving (9 papers)
- Topic 2: Large Language Models and Fine-Tuning Techniques (8 papers)
- Topic 3: Multimodal Learning and Generation (7 papers)
- Topic 4: Reinforcement Learning and Policy Optimization (9 papers)
- Topic 5: Cross-Lingual and Dialect Robustness (9 papers)
- Topic 6: Healthcare and Social AI Applications (10 papers)
- Topic 7: Code Generation and Analysis (8 papers)
- Topic 8: Data and Knowledge Management (5 papers)
- Topic 9: Simulation and Synthetic Data (4 papers)
- Topic 10: Evaluation and Testing (4 papers)
- Topic 11: misc (6 papers)
Topic 1: Reasoning and Problem Solving
Topic Overview
Reasoning and problem solving are fundamental cognitive abilities that enable the comprehension and resolution of complex tasks. In the context of large language models (LLMs), these abilities are crucial for enhancing the models’ applicability in various domains, including mathematics, coding, cybersecurity, and mental health assessment. However, LLMs face several challenges in reasoning tasks, such as inefficiency, lack of continuous verification signals, and difficulty in handling cross-lingual and multimodal data. Addressing these issues is vital for advancing the reliability and effectiveness of LLMs in real-world applications, particularly where precise and logical reasoning is required.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Wenkai Yang from Renmin University of China and colleagues studied the inefficiency and lack of continuous verification signals in LLMs during complex reasoning tasks, proposing LaSeR (Reinforcement Learning with Last-Token Self-Rewarding) to solve these issues. The main innovation points of this method are the computation of self-rewarding scores based on the last-token log-probability ratio and the introduction of practical techniques like class-level loss re-weighting and integration of verifier-based and self-rewarding-based advantages. The value lies in its ability to reduce computational costs significantly while improving the reasoning and self-verification capabilities of LLMs. Experiments on LLaMA and Qwen architectures and validated using the DeepMath-103K dataset for training and multiple math reasoning benchmarks for testing showed that LaSeR achieved higher accuracy and better self-verification capability across different model variants compared to baselines, concluding that LaSeR provides a reliable self-verification mechanism at nearly zero additional cost 1.
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Kedi Chen from East China Normal University and colleagues focused on enhancing the inductive reasoning abilities of LLMs, proposing the CodeSeq synthetic data pipeline to address the issue of LLMs struggling with complex pattern recognition and proper training for inductive reasoning tasks. The main innovation points include the sequence algorithmization, case-based reflection injection, and solvability-estimated selection components. The value lies in its ability to support knowledge generalization and improve inductive reasoning skills through a novel synthetic data pipeline and the General Term Generation (GTG) task. Experiments on LLaMA and Qwen architectures using the GTG task and out-of-domain (OOD) benchmarks showed that models trained with CodeSeq exhibited significant improvements in inductive reasoning, achieving performances comparable to or surpassing larger parameter models 2.
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Mahbub E Sobhani from BRAC University and colleagues tackled the uneven mathematical competence of LLMs across diverse languages, introducing MathMist, a parallel multilingual benchmark dataset for assessing mathematical problem-solving and reasoning. The main innovation is the inclusion of over 21K aligned question-answer pairs across seven languages, enabling evaluation of models’ reasoning capabilities in various linguistic contexts. The value lies in the identification of language-specific biases and the necessity of language-aware fine-tuning and cross-lingual alignment for unbiased reasoning. Experiments on the MathMist dataset revealed that GPT-OSS-20B performed best across languages, with Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting significantly increasing accuracy for most models, especially in English. However, smaller models like Mathstral showed a performance drop in Bangla, indicating the importance of multilingual pretraining and instruction tuning 3.
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César Guerra-Solano from University of Pittsburgh and colleagues aimed to evaluate LLMs in abstract reasoning tasks across different languages, introducing GlobalGroup, a multilingual word grouping game inspired by the New York Times Connections game. The main innovation points are the use of multilingual representations and the evaluation of game difficulty through metrics such as group size and word overlap. The value lies in its ability to measure abstract reasoning capabilities in various languages and identify the need for multilingual training paradigms. Experiments showed that GPT-4 performed best overall, followed by Llama3.1-70B, and that multilingual-focused training significantly enhanced the performance of open-source models 4.
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Weikang Shi from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and colleagues addressed the limitation of LLMs in handling visually demanding mathematical reasoning tasks, proposing MathCanvas, a framework that integrates visual information into the reasoning process. The main innovation is the intrinsic Visual Chain-of-Thought (VCoT) approach that allows LMMs to generate and edit diagrams as part of their reasoning. The value lies in enhancing the models’ performance in geometry-heavy subjects by leveraging visual aids. Experiments on the MathCanvas-Bench test set showed that BAGEL-Canvas achieved a significant 86% relative improvement over strong LMM baselines, particularly in Trigonometry, Plane Geometry, and Solid Geometry 5.
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Yuanyi Song from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and colleagues solved the inadequacy of current evaluation standards for mobile agents operating through GUIs, proposing ColorBench, a graph-structured benchmarking framework. The main innovation is the simulation of real mobile environments through finite states and action transition relationships, supporting multiple valid solutions and subtask completion rates. The value lies in providing a static yet flexible testing environment for evaluating complex long-horizon tasks. Experiments on the ColorBench dataset revealed that models with enhanced planning, reflection, and memory capabilities performed better, though overly complex module combinations introduced instability and error accumulation 6.
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Hwiyeol Jo from NAVER Cloud and colleagues addressed the unreliable evaluation of LLMs that require reasoning, proposing Answer Regeneration, a new framework that alleviates dependency on specific answer extraction rules. The main innovation is the generation-based approach that prompts the model to regenerate its final answer after presenting the reasoning process. The value lies in enabling more consistent and robust evaluation, especially for tasks involving detailed Chain-of-Thought (CoT) outputs. Experiments on the MMLU-Pro dataset demonstrated that Answer Regeneration outperformed traditional rule-based extractions, achieving benchmark score improvements ranging from +5.0% to +3.1% 7.
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Jun Li and colleagues studied the limitations of current suicidal ideation detection methods that rely on individual social media posts, introducing a high-quality annotated dataset sourced from Reddit and a structured prompting strategy for LLMs using the Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning approach. The main innovation is the focus on longitudinal comment tree data and a refined four-label annotation framework based on the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS). The value lies in enhancing the prediction of suicidal risk levels by incorporating historical context. Experiments showed that adding comment tree information and historical labels improved the performance of models like Qwen3-4B, GPT-5, and Gemini-2.5-Flash in predicting suicidal risk 8.
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Marco Simoni and colleagues focused on the limitations of current Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) systems in handling multi-hop queries, proposing TITAN, a framework that employs executable reasoning over a structured knowledge graph to answer CTI queries. The main innovation is the TITAN Ontology, which defines a directed, typed, and bidirectional CTI knowledge schema to enable flexible reasoning. The value lies in improving the accuracy and depth of responses to complex CTI questions. Experiments on the TITAN Dataset showed that the CoT-based model outperformed a non-reasoning baseline in generating executable relational paths, achieving higher Path Accuracy and maintaining high linguistic and semantic alignment with reference answers 9.
Technical Trends
The papers in this collection collectively highlight a trend towards integrating reinforcement learning, synthetic data pipelines, and cross-lingual datasets to enhance the reasoning and problem-solving capabilities of LLMs. There is a growing emphasis on developing frameworks and methodologies that can handle complex reasoning tasks more effectively, such as those involving visual aids, multi-step logic, and nuanced language processing. Additionally, there is a noticeable shift towards more comprehensive evaluation methods that account for various forms of reasoning, including inductive, deductive, and multi-modal reasoning, as well as abstract and contextual reasoning.
Datasets and Evaluation Metrics
- DeepMath-103K: Used for training and validating LaSeR’s self-verification mechanism.
- MathCanvas-Edit, MathCanvas-Imagen, MathCanvas-Instruct, MathCanvas-Bench: Datasets for training and evaluating the MathCanvas framework in multimodal mathematical reasoning.
- ColorBench: A graph-structured benchmarking framework for evaluating mobile agents on complex long-horizon tasks.
- MMLU-Pro: Used to evaluate the Answer Regeneration framework’s effectiveness in handling diverse reasoning tasks.
- Suicidal Comment Tree Dataset: Annotated dataset from Reddit for enhancing risk assessment and prediction in mental health.
- TITAN Dataset: Contains natural-language questions paired with CoT explanations and executable relational paths for CTI.
Evaluation metrics include:
- Accuracy: Commonly used to measure the correctness of reasoning outputs.
- F1 Score: Used in GlobalGroup to evaluate model performance in abstract reasoning.
- Weighted Majority Voting: Applied in LaSeR to assess inference-time scaling performance.
- Path Accuracy (Exact Match): Used in TITAN to measure the precision of generated relational paths.
- ROUGE-L, BLEU, BERTScore: Employed in TITAN to evaluate linguistic and semantic alignment with reference answers.
- Topic Achieved (TA) Score: Based on FastText embeddings, used in GlobalGroup to assess model performance.
- Group-Level F1 Scores: Also used in GlobalGroup for evaluating abstract reasoning tasks.
- Benchmark Scores: Utilized in Answer Regeneration to compare performance against rule-based extractions.
Topic 2: Large Language Models and Fine-Tuning Techniques
Topic Overview
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities across a wide range of tasks, from natural language understanding to generative text production. However, their application in specialized fields such as biomedical sciences, mental health diagnostics, and competitive programming requires fine-tuning to address domain-specific challenges and ensure reliability. Fine-tuning techniques are essential to adapt LLMs to these contexts, mitigating issues like knowledge recall, cross-database identifier mapping, socio-cultural alignment, and computational efficiency. This report summarizes recent research papers that explore various fine-tuning methods and techniques to enhance LLMs for specialized applications.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Yuxing Lu from Georgia Institute of Technology and colleagues studied the lack of systematic evaluation of LLMs in metabolomics, proposing MetaBench to solve the problem. The main innovation points of MetaBench include its comprehensive coverage of five core capability levels and derivation from authoritative biochemical resources. The value lies in providing a specialized benchmark that addresses the unique challenges of metabolomics, such as complex pathways and fragmented databases. Experiments on datasets like HMDB and KEGG showed that while LLMs perform well in understanding and research tasks, they struggle significantly with grounding tasks, especially cross-database identifier mapping, without retrieval augmentation. The conclusion is that advanced strategies like active learning and multi-modal models are needed to address the long-tail problem and improve performance 10.
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Jianfeng Zhu from 1 and colleagues addressed the underdiagnosis and misdiagnosis of mental health disorders by introducing AI-powered methods for early detection using large language models (LLMs) and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) techniques like LoRA. The main innovation points involve the creation of a unique dataset of real-world psychiatric interviews and the application of PEFT to enhance encoder-based models for mental health diagnostics. The value lies in demonstrating improved robustness under label imbalance and providing a scalable and context-aware screening tool. Experiments on datasets such as the proposed psychiatric interview corpus revealed that encoder-based models enhanced with PEFT and MLP heads performed better in terms of F1 scores for PTSD and anxiety detection compared to decoder-based models. The conclusion is that PEFT can effectively boost encoder-based models without requiring significant additional parameters 11.
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Emmy Liu from Carnegie Mellon University and colleagues investigated the midtraining phase in language model training, proposing no new methods but providing empirical evidence on its effectiveness. The main innovation points include controlled experiments to compare midtraining with continued pretraining and direct fine-tuning. The value lies in offering a structured approach to understand the midtraining phase, which is crucial for enhancing model performance in specialized domains like math and coding. Experiments on datasets like Starcoder and GSM8k showed that midtraining significantly improves downstream performance and helps preserve general language modeling capabilities better than continued pretraining. The conclusion is that the timing of midtraining data introduction is critical, with earlier introduction being more beneficial 12.
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Kyubyung Chae from Seoul National University and colleagues examined the socio-cultural alignment and technical safety of sovereign LLMs, proposing a new dataset and analytic framework to assess these aspects. The main innovation points include a multi-lingual experimental setting and the examination of sovereign LLMs across different languages and cultures. The value lies in providing a cross-national perspective and identifying vulnerabilities in the safety aspects of these models. Experiments on datasets spanning six languages revealed that while sovereign LLMs generally excel in their home country’s socio-cultural context, this is not uniformly observed across all languages, and smaller models with sufficient technical capacity can perform well in socio-cultural contexts. The conclusion is that there is a need for further improvements in the safety and cultural sensitivity of sovereign LLMs 13.
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Mehrzad Samadi from NVIDIA and colleagues aimed to achieve gold medal-level performance in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) using open-weight LLMs, proposing GenCluster to solve this problem. The main innovation points include a scalable and reproducible test-time compute framework that employs large-scale generation, behavioral clustering, ranking, and a round-robin submission strategy. The value lies in providing a transparent and replicable approach for optimizing LLMs for competitive programming tasks. Experiments on IOI problems demonstrated that GenCluster enabled the open-weight model gpt-oss-120b to achieve IOI gold-level performance, marking the first instance of such achievement with an open-weight model. The conclusion is that increased compute and larger generation budgets consistently improve performance 14.
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Xujun Peng from Capital One and colleagues tackled the inconsistency in responses generated by LLMs in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, proposing a layer-wise merging strategy to enhance consistency. The main innovation points include systematic synthetic data generation, triplet loss for embedding quality improvement, and a layer-wise merging strategy. The value lies in addressing the limitations of fine-tuning techniques and the scarcity of consistency-focused training data, providing a practical solution for increasing RAG system reliability. Experiments on datasets like Llama and Gemma showed that the merged model achieved the highest consistency scores across all metrics without significant trade-offs in accuracy. The conclusion is that the layer-wise merging strategy effectively combines the strengths of specialized models, improving the reliability of RAG system responses 15.
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Yingpeng Ning from 1 and colleagues focused on mitigating hallucinations in biomedical QA systems, proposing MedTrust-RAG to solve the issue of post-retrieval noise and insufficient evidence verification. The main innovation points include enforcing citation-aware reasoning, iterative retrieval-verification, and the MedTrust-Align Module (MTAM) for training. The value lies in enhancing the factual consistency and reducing hallucinations in medical QA, making these systems safer and more reliable. Experiments on MedMCQA, MedQA, and MMLU-Med datasets showed up to 2.7% absolute gains in average accuracy for LLaMA3.1-8B-Instruct and 2.4% for Qwen3-8B. The conclusion is that the dual-agent architecture and MedTrust-Align training strategy effectively mitigate hallucinations across various types 16.
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Mohammadsajad Alipour from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and colleagues explored the performance degradation in merging multiple low-rank adapted models, proposing Reversible Model Merging (RMM) to solve this problem. The main innovation points involve constructing a compact basis of model weights that allows for the recovery of original task-specific models through linear combinations. The value lies in offering a data-free, closed-form solution for managing a large number of compressed models efficiently. Experiments on datasets like the GLUE benchmark and model architectures like RoBERTa-base and OPT-1.3b showed that RMM consistently outperformed existing merging approaches, achieving up to 72.22% on the GLUE benchmark for merging eight RoBERTa-base models compressed with PT-SVD at rank 16. The conclusion is that RMM effectively preserves the performance of low-rank models while offering a tunable trade-off between storage and performance 17.
Technical Trends
The papers reviewed here highlight several emerging trends in the field of LLM fine-tuning and adaptation:
- Specialized Benchmarks and Datasets: There is a growing emphasis on developing domain-specific benchmarks and datasets tailored to the unique challenges of specialized fields, such as metabolomics and biomedical QA.
- Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT): Methods like LoRA are being explored to fine-tune models efficiently, especially in resource-constrained settings like mental health diagnostics.
- Midtraining Techniques: The importance of midtraining as a phase in the training process is becoming evident, particularly for preserving general capabilities while improving specialized performance.
- Consistency Enhancement: Techniques to improve the consistency of model outputs, especially in RAG systems, are being developed to ensure reliable and trustworthy responses.
- Reproducibility and Transparency: Efforts to make LLM evaluations and optimizations more transparent and reproducible, such as with GenCluster and RMM, are being prioritized.
- Multi-Task and Multi-Model Management: Strategies for managing multiple task-specific models, particularly in low-rank adaptation scenarios, are evolving to address scalability and performance issues.
Datasets and Evaluation Metrics
- MetaBench: Uses datasets like HMDB, KEGG, PathBank, MetaKG, and MetaboLights for evaluating LLMs in metabolomics.
- Real-world Psychiatric Interviews: Unique dataset for mental health diagnostics.
- Starcoder, MAmmoTH, OpenMathInstruct, FLAN, DCLM: Used to investigate the midtraining phase in specialized domains.
- GSM8k, SciQ, CodeSearchNet-Python, LIMA: Datasets used to evaluate the effectiveness of midtraining in math and coding.
- MedRankQA, MedMCQA, MedQA, MMLU-Med: Datasets constructed for biomedical QA, incorporating MedQA and MedMCQA.
- GLUE Benchmark, RoBERTa-base, OPT-1.3b: Used to evaluate the effectiveness of Reversible Model Merging (RMM).
Evaluation metrics vary across the papers, including:
- Factual Recall and Accuracy: Used in MetaBench for assessing knowledge and understanding.
- F1 Scores, Recall, Accuracy: Used in mental health diagnostics to evaluate classification performance.
- Validation Loss, Forgetting Metrics: Used to measure the impact of midtraining on specialized domain performance.
- Exact Match (EM), Response Similarity (RS), Bert Similarity (BS), ROUGE, BLEU: Metrics for assessing the consistency and reliability of RAG systems.
- Quantitative Accuracy, Human Evaluation: Used in socio-cultural alignment and technical safety assessments.
- Absolute Gains in Average Accuracy: Metrics for evaluating the reduction in hallucinations in biomedical QA systems.
- Reconstruction Error: Used to characterize the optimal choice of basis for merging low-rank models.
Topic 3: Multimodal Learning and Generation
Topic Overview
Multimodal learning and generation is a rapidly evolving field within artificial intelligence, focusing on developing models capable of processing and generating content across multiple sensory modalities, such as text, images, and audio. These models aim to bridge the gap between different types of data, enabling a more holistic understanding and creation of information. The importance of this topic lies in its potential to enhance AI systems’ abilities to interact with humans in a more natural and intuitive manner, thereby expanding their applicability in diverse fields such as healthcare, education, and entertainment. Despite the promising advancements, challenges remain, particularly concerning robustness, precision, and the ability to handle nuanced data like dialects or specific personality traits.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Yu Zhou from University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues studied the poor performance of multimodal generative models when processing dialectal English input, proposing DialectGen, a large-scale benchmark to assess and improve dialect robustness across multiple English dialects. The main innovation points of this method are the introduction of a general encoder-based learning strategy and an encoder-based KL regularization loss to manage output distribution shifts. The value lies in its rigorous approach to collecting and verifying dialect prompts, ensuring they are synonymous, contextually valid, and unambiguous, thereby addressing allocational harms towards dialect speakers and enhancing the utility of AI systems for diverse linguistic communities. Experiments on DialectGen, involving over 4,200 unique prompts across six dialects, showed a +34.4% improvement on dialects with near-zero cost on Standard American English (SAE) performance, concluding that their method raises performance on five dialects to be on par with SAE18.
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Michelle S. Lam from Stanford University and colleagues aimed to solve the issue of generic and unopinionated outputs generated by large language models (LLMs), proposing an architecture for ‘just-in-time objectives’ that infers user objectives during interaction to steer LLM behavior. The main innovation points are the introduction of the Poppins system, a browser extension and web application, and the use of multiple LLMs and a library of LLM helper functions to generate customized interactive tools and expert feedback. The value lies in the enhanced responsiveness and relevance of AI interactions, making them more effective in supporting users across various domains and tasks. Outputs generated with just-in-time objectives were preferred over a baseline LLM in 71% to 86% of cases for Study 1 and 66% to 70% of cases for Study 2, concluding that this approach delivers more personalized and relevant AI assistance19.
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Matan Rusanovsky from Tel Aviv University and colleagues addressed the limitation of vision-language models (VLMs) in performing pixel-precise keypoint comprehension through natural language, introducing a novel framework with a Point Descriptor and a Point Localizer. The main innovation points are the use of reinforcement learning (RL) with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) for adapting the Point Descriptor to novel categories without ground-truth descriptions and the presentation of a new evaluation methodology using the mPCK metric. The value lies in its focus on generating free-form, context-rich descriptions and emphasizing pixel-level precision, which is crucial for fields like robotics and medical imaging. Experiments demonstrated a significant increase in mPCK scores, with human annotations performing worse than the proposed model and ChatGPT-5, concluding that the system can effectively translate natural language into precise pixel coordinates20.
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Mengzhao Jia from University of Notre Dame and colleagues tackled the issue of spurious reasoning in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) when trained with Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR). They proposed AutoRubric-R1V, a framework that integrates rubric-based generative rewards into RLVR to promote more faithful and accurate multimodal reasoning. The main innovation points are the scalable self-aggregation method to automatically collect rubrics from successful trajectories and the combination of rubric-based reasoning rewards with conventional outcome rewards. The value lies in improved stability and generalization, preventing reward hacking and enhancing the model’s ability to handle unseen problems. Experiments achieved state-of-the-art performance on six multimodal reasoning benchmarks, with significant improvements over baselines, concluding that problem-specific rubrics boost model performance21.
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Annisaa Fitri Nurfidausi and colleagues focused on the automatic detection of depression using a trimodal approach involving speech, text, and EEG data. They proposed a comprehensive experimental framework that evaluates different feature extraction methods and fusion strategies. The main innovation points include a systematic exploration of feature representations and modeling strategies, detailed preprocessing steps, and a thorough investigation of different fusion techniques. The value lies in enhancing depression detection performance through multimodal integration and ensuring reproducibility by avoiding data leakage. The majority voting fusion strategy across the three modalities achieved the highest F1-score of 0.874, establishing a new state-of-the-art performance for trimodal depression detection on the MODMA dataset22.
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Hatef Otroshi Shahreza and colleagues explored the performance of open-source multimodal large language models (MLLMs) for face recognition against existing specialized models. They introduced a systematic benchmarking approach across multiple standard datasets, focusing on zero-shot recognition scenarios. The main innovation points are the consistent evaluation protocol and the identification of the saturation point for model size improvements. The value lies in understanding the limitations and capabilities of MLLMs in face recognition, suggesting that domain-specific fine-tuning can enhance their applicability. The Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct model outperformed other MLLMs on most benchmarks, with significant performance gaps identified on the RFW dataset, concluding that there is room for improvement in demographic fairness23.
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Ryo Masumura from TT, Inc., Japan and colleagues studied the automatic recognition of apparent personality traits from multimodal human behavior, specifically focusing on integrating both the Big Five and HEXACO models. They introduced a joint modeling method that leverages a multimodal transformer architecture to handle audio, visual, and text data. The main innovation points are the explicit consideration of the relationships between Big Five and HEXACO traits and the introduction of a new dataset annotated with both frameworks. The value lies in enhancing the robustness and accuracy of personality trait recognition, broadening the scope of personality analysis beyond the Big Five traits. Experiments showed that the joint model outperforms individual Big Five and HEXACO models, achieving high Pearson’s correlation coefficients and accuracy, concluding that integrating multiple modalities and considering trait relationships leads to more accurate recognition24.
Technical Trends
The papers collectively highlight several emerging trends in multimodal learning and generation:
- Benchmark Development: There is a growing emphasis on creating benchmarks that address specific issues such as dialect robustness, depression detection, and personality trait recognition, ensuring that models are evaluated on diverse and challenging datasets.
- Integration of Multiple Modalities: Several studies explore the integration of different types of data (e.g., speech, text, and EEG; audio, visual, and text) to improve the accuracy and reliability of AI models, particularly in complex tasks.
- Adaptive and Contextual Learning Strategies: Innovations in learning strategies, such as just-in-time objectives and reinforcement learning with policy optimization, are being developed to make models more adaptable to specific contexts and user needs.
- Fine-Tuning and Domain Adaptation: Fine-tuning of models on domain-specific tasks is increasingly recognized as essential for improving performance in specialized areas like face recognition and personality trait analysis.
Datasets and Evaluation
- DialectGen: Over 4,200 unique prompts across six English dialects, evaluated on 17 different image and video generative models.
- MODMA: Trimodal dataset (speech, text, EEG) for depression detection, featuring automatic transcriptions generated using speech-to-text models.
- Standard Face Recognition Datasets: LFW, CALFW, CPLFW, CFP, AgeDB-30, and RFW for evaluating MLLMs in face recognition tasks.
- LlamaPointInPart: Over 20,000 image-keypoint-description triplets for pixel-level grounding.
- Self-Introduction Videos Dataset: New dataset annotated with both Big Five and HEXACO traits for multimodal apparent personality-trait recognition.
Evaluation metrics vary by paper but commonly include:
- mPCK (Mean Pixel-Correct Keypoint): For pixel-level grounding tasks.
- F1-score: For depression detection tasks.
- Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient: For evaluating personality trait recognition.
- Accuracy and Performance Degradation: For assessing the robustness of models to dialectal inputs and their generalization in face recognition tasks.
These contributions and findings collectively advance the field of multimodal learning and generation, addressing specific challenges and pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities in handling complex, diverse, and nuanced data.
Topic 4: Reinforcement Learning and Policy Optimization
Topic Overview
Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Policy Optimization are pivotal in developing autonomous agents that can make decisions in complex, dynamic environments. These techniques have been widely applied to improve the performance and adaptability of Large Language Models (LLMs) in various tasks, including instruction following, multi-agent collaboration, and complex reasoning and planning. The importance of this research lies in enhancing the reliability, efficiency, and versatility of AI systems, which are increasingly integrated into real-world applications ranging from customer service to software development. By addressing challenges such as sparse reward signals, high computational costs, and the need for proactive assistance, these studies contribute to the broader goal of creating intelligent systems that can interact naturally and effectively with humans and their environments.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Qingyu Ren from Fudan University and colleagues studied the inadequacy of LLMs in following multi-constraint instructions, proposing a self-supervised RL framework to improve instruction-following capabilities without external labels. The main innovation points are the use of pseudo-label generation for both hard and soft constraints, and a multi-constraint decomposition strategy to generate dense learning signals. The value lies in achieving true label-free training and addressing the issues of sparse reward signals and heavy computation. Experiments on datasets like IFEval, CFBench, and others showed a significant improvement in constraint-following capability, particularly a +21.6% gain on the Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct model compared to baselines, concluding that the framework enhances consistency and generalization in model answers.25
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Bingsheng Yao from Northeastern University and colleagues addressed the lack of fidelity in behavior alignment between LLM role-playing agents (RPAs) and human individuals, proposing the Dynamic Persona Refinement Framework (DPRF). The main innovation points are the automated, iterative refinement of persona profiles and the use of a behavior analysis agent grounded in Theory of Mind principles. The value lies in improving the authenticity of behavior simulation in LLM RPAs, which is crucial for applications like social science experiments and user experience research. Experiments across four scenarios using datasets such as Intelligence Squared Debates and CSSRS-Suicide showed consistent improvements in sentence embedding similarity, ROUGE-L F1, and BERTScore F1 metrics over baseline methods, particularly in the first few iterations, indicating better alignment in both semantic and structural fidelity.26
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Wenqian Zhang from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) and colleagues explored the potential of LLMs in designing complex machines within a simulated environment. They introduced BesiegeField, a testbed for evaluating machine designs generated by AI models, and conducted RL finetuning experiments with a curated dataset. The main innovation points are the use of a simulation game for physical reasoning and the integration of reinforcement learning to enhance machine design skills. The value lies in advancing the understanding of AI’s ability to emulate human creativity and intelligence in engineering tasks. Experiments demonstrated the need for additional training methods to improve spatial reasoning and instruction-following, showing initial progress but also highlighting ongoing challenges.27
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Jingyao Liu from Sichuan University and colleagues tackled the inadequacy of existing benchmarks for evaluating LLMs in end-to-end software development tasks. They proposed E2EDev, a new benchmark using Behavior-Driven Development principles, and the Human-in-the-Loop Multi-Agent Annotation Framework (HITL-MAA) to construct the benchmark efficiently. The main innovation points are the precise specification of user requirements and the reduction of annotation burdens through human verification of LLM-generated test cases. The value lies in providing a more rigorous and realistic evaluation of LLM-driven software development frameworks. Experiments revealed that current frameworks struggle with meeting user requirements effectively, with the top performance falling below 60%, and suggested a focus on cost-efficient designs and precise implementation details.28
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Guanting Dong from Renmin University of China and colleagues focused on the inefficiency and instability in training web agents through RL due to high-entropy challenges. They introduced Agentic Entropy-Balanced Policy Optimization (AEPO), which balances entropy during rollouts and policy updates to address high-entropy issues. The main innovation points are the dynamic entropy-balanced rollout mechanism and the entropy-aware advantage estimation technique. The value lies in promoting diverse exploration and improving learning dynamics for web agents. Comprehensive evaluations across 14 datasets showed AEPO outperforming other methods like ARPO and GRPO in pass rates, indicating its effectiveness in training web agents with improved exploration behaviors.29
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Xikai Zhang from Hangzhou International Innovation Institute, Beihang University and colleagues addressed the inefficiency of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) for complex reasoning and planning tasks. They proposed the IMAGINE framework, which integrates MAS behaviors into a single, more efficient model. The main innovation points are the integration of MAS into a unified model and the introduction of Agentic Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and Agentic Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO). The value lies in reducing computational overhead and simplifying the training process for complex reasoning tasks. Experiments on the TravelPlanner dataset demonstrated significant improvements in Final Pass Rate and other evaluation metrics compared to existing baselines, underscoring the potential for more efficient MAS solutions.30
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Zichen Wen and colleagues introduced a proactive AI service model for real-world applications, such as customer support and technical fieldwork, using AI glasses. They proposed the Alpha Service framework, emphasizing proactive, generalized, and personalized assistance. The main innovation points are the modular design inspired by the Von Neumann computer architecture and the integration of various AI models and tools for real-time assistance. The value lies in enhancing user experience through proactive and adaptive AI services. Examples of the system’s capabilities include offering strategic advice in Blackjack and providing summaries in a museum setting, indicating improved operational efficiency and human-agent collaboration.31
Technical Trends
The papers in this collection exhibit a trend towards integrating reinforcement learning and policy optimization techniques to address the limitations of large language models in specific tasks. Innovations include self-supervised learning for instruction following, dynamic persona refinement for role-playing agents, RL-driven machine design, end-to-end software development benchmarks, and entropy-balanced policy optimization for web agents. There is also a move towards modular and generalized AI systems, such as Alpha Service, which aim to provide proactive assistance in real-world scenarios.
Datasets and Evaluation Metrics
- Instruction Following: IFEval, CFBench, FollowBench, ComplexBench, WritingBench, Collie, AgentIF, MultiChallenge
- Multi-Agent Persona Alignment: Intelligence Squared Debates, DepSeverity, CSSRS-Suicide, IMDB, PublicInterview
- Machine Design Simulation: BesiegeField
- Software Development: E2EDev
- Complex Reasoning and Planning: TravelPlanner
- Web Agent Training: GAIA, HLE, WebWalkerQA
- Proactive AI Services: No specific datasets mentioned
Evaluation metrics vary across the papers but generally include accuracy, pass rates, sentence embedding similarity, ROUGE-L F1, BERTScore F1, and other task-specific metrics. Some papers also consider computational efficiency and resource usage as part of their evaluation criteria.
Topic 5: Cross-Lingual and Dialect Robustness
Topic Overview
Cross-lingual and dialect robustness in natural language processing (NLP) is a critical area of research aimed at developing models that can handle linguistic variations across different languages and dialects efficiently and accurately. This field is essential for advancing the inclusivity and effectiveness of AI-driven language technologies, ensuring that they can serve diverse linguistic communities and operate seamlessly in multilingual environments. Addressing the challenges of limited resources, noisy translations, and varied contextual cues across languages and dialects is fundamental to building robust NLP systems applicable in real-world scenarios.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Matt Grenander from University of Edinburgh and colleagues studied the inefficiency of existing sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) coreference resolution models in handling text incrementally. They proposed the Entity-Centric representation method to improve the efficiency of seq2seq coreference resolution in an incremental setting. The main innovation points are the compression of input by retaining only the text spans corresponding to predicted entities and discarding irrelevant tokens. The practical value lies in reducing the computational burden while maintaining high accuracy in coreference resolution. Experiments on the OntoNotes and LitBank datasets showed nearly twofold compression in input length with only a slight drop in performance (0.7 CoNLL F1 on OntoNotes and 0.8 F1 on LitBank) compared to full-prefix baselines, concluding that the Entity-Centric method could be particularly useful in scenarios where computational load reduction is critical32.
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Haolin Li from Tsinghua University and Alibaba Group and colleagues addressed the performance disparity of large language models (LLMs) between high-resource languages and low-resource languages. They introduced LiRA (Linguistic Robust Anchoring for Large Language Models), a training framework that enhances cross-lingual representations in low-resource conditions. The main innovation points are the Arca module, which anchors low-resource languages to an English semantic space, and the LaSR module, which adds a lightweight reasoning head with consistency regularization. The value lies in closing the performance gap across various tasks and providing a theoretically grounded framework. Experiments on public retrieval benchmarks (MLQARetrieval, BelebeleRetrieval, and STS22) and the newly introduced LazRetrieval dataset demonstrated significant performance improvements ranging from 0.53 to 3.36 points across different metrics compared to the base model (Qwen3-E-8B), concluding that LiRA effectively mitigates translation and representation noise in low-resource languages33.
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Marwa Abdulhai from UC Berkeley and colleagues focused on the deceptive behavior exhibited by large language models (LLMs) in multi-turn dialogues, which is a significant safety and ethical concern. They proposed a new metric called ‘belief misalignment’ to measure the divergence between a listener’s beliefs and the true state of the world, along with a multi-turn reinforcement learning (RL) pipeline for fine-tuning LLMs to reduce deceptive behaviors. The main innovation points are the multi-turn process and the use of LLMs as judges to evaluate dialogue metrics. The practical value lies in ensuring safer and more responsible use of AI. Experiments on four dialogue datasets (Housing, Nutrition, Charity, and Deal or No Deal) showed a significant reduction in belief misalignment, up to 77.6% compared to the instruction-tuned baseline, without sacrificing task performance, concluding that the multi-turn RL approach is effective in reducing deceptive behavior34.
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Sathyanarayanan Ramamoorthy from Carnegie Mellon University and colleagues tackled the challenge of performing entity linking (EL) in a multilingual and multimodal setting. They introduced MERLIN, a testbed system for multilingual multimodal entity linking, along with a new dataset featuring BBC news article titles and corresponding images in five non-English languages. The main innovation points are the incorporation of visual data to disambiguate entities and the adaptation of the GEMEL framework to work with multilingual models like Aya-23. The value lies in providing a benchmark for evaluating multilingual multimodal entity linking methods. Experiments on the MERLIN dataset revealed that the inclusion of visual data significantly improved entity linking accuracy, especially for ambiguous mentions and certain types like PER, concluding that multimodal context is crucial for accurate entity linking in non-English languages35.
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Jihao Zhao and colleagues addressed the limitation of traditional Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems that rely on passive text chunking. They proposed the Mixtures of scenario-aware document Memories (MoM) framework, shifting from passive text chunking to active memory extraction. The main innovation points are the multi-path sampling and evaluation mechanism, unique metrics for assessing document memories, and a reverse reasoning strategy (CoM) to train small language models (SLMs) with deeper understanding capabilities. The value lies in simulating how domain experts deeply understand and organize documents, thus improving knowledge internalization and reasoning. Experiments on CRUD, OmniEval, and MultiFieldQA_zh datasets showed superior performance across multiple metrics, concluding that the MoM framework effectively handles diverse and complex information without losing clarity or completeness36.
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Mykolas Sveistrys from Turbit Systems GmbH and colleagues focused on the difficulty in accurately answering ‘pluri-hop’ questions, which require aggregating data across all documents in a knowledge base. They introduced PluriHopWIND, a new dataset of 48 pluri-hop questions derived from 191 real-world wind industry reports in German and English, and proposed a new RAG architecture named PluriHopRAG. The main innovation points are document-scope query decomposition and cross-encoder-based document filtering. The value lies in enabling efficient exhaustive retrieval and early filtering of irrelevant documents. Experiments on the PluriHopWIND dataset showed substantial relative improvements in F1 score (18-52%) compared to the baseline and other modern RAG approaches, concluding that the proposed method effectively addresses the challenges posed by repetitive and distractor-rich corpora37.
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Ziye Xia and colleagues explored the challenge of deeply analyzing the relational networks between key concepts in academic papers. They proposed a prompt engineering-based key concept path analysis method and constructed an agent-based analysis system grounded in the OpenAlex knowledge graph. The main innovation points are head–tail concept constraints, alignment with external knowledge bases, and an interactive closed loop with an expert validation module. The value lies in providing a comprehensive and accurate analysis of academic content, which facilitates tracking and evaluating the latest research findings. Experiments on a curated dataset of 7,960 papers showed significant improvements in accuracy with a final F1-score of 91.46% in the end-to-end process, outperforming both a direct generation baseline and off-the-shelf large language models without fine-tuning, concluding that structured external knowledge plays a critical role in constraining and refining the outputs of language models38.
Technical Trends
The papers in this collection showcase a shift towards more sophisticated and context-sensitive techniques for addressing cross-lingual and dialect robustness. Key trends include:
- Incremental Processing: Grenander et al. focus on improving the efficiency of seq2seq models through incremental processing, which is vital for real-time applications like dialogue systems.
- Multimodality and Cross-lingual Alignment: Li et al. and Ramamoorthy et al. incorporate visual data and anchor-based alignment to bridge the gap between high-resource and low-resource languages, enhancing the robustness of large language models.
- Reinforcement Learning for Ethical AI: Abdulhai et al. employ reinforcement learning to reduce deceptive behavior in multi-turn dialogues, emphasizing the ethical implications of AI interactions.
- Document Memory Extraction: Zhao et al. propose active memory extraction to improve knowledge internalization and reasoning in RAG systems, moving away from passive text chunking.
- Pluri-hop Question Answering: Sveistrys et al. develop a specialized RAG architecture to handle complex, multi-document questions, demonstrating the importance of query decomposition and document filtering.
- Conceptual Path Analysis in Academia: Xia et al. integrate small language models with knowledge graphs for deep analysis of academic papers, highlighting the role of structured external knowledge in enhancing model outputs.
Datasets and Evaluation Metrics
The datasets and evaluation metrics used across the papers are diverse and tailored to specific research objectives:
- OntoNotes and LitBank: Used by Grenander et al. for coreference resolution, with evaluation metrics including CoNLL F1.
- LazRetrieval: Developed by Li et al. for evaluating cross-lingual representations in low-resource languages, with metrics including F1 scores.
- Housing, Nutrition, Charity, and Deal or No Deal: Employed by Abdulhai et al. to assess deceptive behavior in multi-turn dialogues, using the belief misalignment metric.
- BBC News Dataset: Utilized by Ramamoorthy et al. for multilingual multimodal entity linking, evaluated through precision, recall, and F1 scores.
- ParaRel, MCQA, MMLU, OpenBookQA, SciQ: Used by Nadkarni et al. for studying the effects of pretraining data on model behavior, with evaluations based on factual knowledge acquisition.
- CLINC-150, BANKING77, STACKOVERFLOW: Applied by Rashwan et al. for out-of-scope intent detection, assessed through macro F1 scores.
- PluriHopWIND: Created by Sveistrys et al. for pluri-hop question answering, evaluated using F1 scores.
- Curated Academic Papers Dataset: Provided by Xia et al. for mining conceptual pathways, assessed through F1 scores and human-annotated innovation points.
These datasets and metrics collectively offer a comprehensive view of the challenges and solutions in cross-lingual and dialect robustness, spanning coreference resolution, cross-lingual alignment, ethical AI, knowledge extraction, and academic content analysis.
Topic 6: Healthcare and Social AI Applications
Topic Overview
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare and social applications has rapidly expanded in recent years, driven by the increasing capabilities of large language models (LLMs). These AI systems hold promise for improving patient outcomes, enhancing mental health support, and facilitating personalized interactions. However, the deployment of such systems also introduces challenges related to safety, interpretability, and ethical considerations. Ensuring that AI models provide accurate, safe, and ethical outputs in healthcare and social contexts is paramount, as any failure can have severe consequences for individuals and society. This report summarizes eight research papers that tackle various aspects of these challenges, ranging from safety guardrails and interpretability to personalized response generation and search space optimization in LLMs.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Haiquan Zhao from Alibaba Cloud and colleagues studied the limitations of existing guardrail models in moderating the outputs of LLMs, proposing Qwen3Guard to address the issues of binary safety labels and non-streaming safety checks. The main innovation points of this method are the introduction of a three-tiered severity classification system (safe, controversial, unsafe), real-time detection capabilities, and support for a wide range of languages. The value lies in providing a more nuanced and adaptable safety assessment system, which can integrate seamlessly into streaming inference workflows. Experiments on a dataset of over 1.19 million samples, including both prompts and responses, covering 119 languages and dialects, showed that Qwen3Guard-Gen outperformed baselines on 8 out of 14 public English benchmarks, and Qwen3Guard-Stream enabled timely intervention during content generation, reducing exposure to potentially harmful outputs. The study concluded that the controversial label and distillation technique enhance the model’s performance and adaptability39.
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Elena Golimblevskaia from Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute and colleagues addressed the difficulty in understanding the internal mechanisms and computations of LLMs, particularly in medical analysis. They introduced two frameworks, WeightLens and CircuitLens, which interpret models using only weights and transcoder weights, respectively. The main innovation is the reduction in dependency on datasets and explainer LLMs, along with a circuit-based clustering approach and a sampling strategy to cover a broader range of activation cases. The value lies in enhancing transparency and trust in AI systems, allowing for better diagnostics and control over model behavior. Experiments on Gemma-2-2b, GPT-2 Small, and Llama-3.2-1B models revealed that WeightLens performed comparably or better in terms of clarity and responsiveness, while CircuitLens improved isolation of specific concepts. The conclusion was that weight-based descriptions can be as effective as activation-based methods in interpretability40.
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Soorya Ram Shimgekar from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and colleagues focused on detecting early and implicit suicidal ideation (SI) on social media. They introduced a new framework that incorporates longitudinal posting patterns and peer interactions. The innovation points include the use of fine-tuned DeBERTa-v3 models and a detailed methodology for constructing timelines and detecting neighboring users. The value lies in enhancing mental health monitoring and support systems on social media platforms by identifying subtle, contextually obscured, or socially distributed indicators of SI. Experiments showed that models incorporating top neighbor posts significantly outperformed those relying solely on self-posts, achieving a peak accuracy of 0.95 and an F1-score of 0.96. The LIWC analysis indicated that the social context provided by peer interactions offered valuable predictive signals, confirming the framework’s robustness and effectiveness41.
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Andrew Zhao from Tsinghua University and colleagues explored the vulnerabilities of prompt optimization processes in LLMs, proposing a defense mechanism against fake reward attacks. The main innovation is the identification of feedback manipulation as a significant security risk and the introduction of a lightweight defense strategy that highlights boundaries between queries and feedback. The value lies in enhancing the safety and reliability of AI applications that depend on LLMs. Experiments on the HarmBench dataset revealed that the defense strategy effectively reduced the attack success rate (ASR) from 0.23 to 0.07, without negatively impacting performance. The study concluded that optimization pipelines need stronger safeguards, especially against feedback manipulation42.
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Xingmeng Zhao from The University of Texas at San Antonio and colleagues proposed a human-centered framework that integrates automated user story generation with structured red-team discussions to identify unintended harms in healthcare AI systems. The main innovation points are the simulation of interactions between users, AI systems, and environments, and the provision of a dataset of 38 consumer health AI solutions with corresponding use-case scenarios. The value lies in early ethical foresight, enabling stakeholders to understand potential benefits and harms associated with AI tools before deployment. Experiments demonstrated that participants engaging with the stories recognized a broader spectrum of ethical issues compared to traditional plot-planning methods. The storytelling method outperformed baselines in metrics such as creativity, coherence, and engagement, indicating its effectiveness in ethical foresight43.
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Shiyao Ding from unknown institution and colleagues tackled the issue of personalization in LLMs during response generation. They introduced a new benchmark for personalized response generation, focusing on multilingual (English, Japanese, Chinese) human-agent conversations over multiple days. The innovation points include the construction of a dataset from dialogue sessions with LLM-driven NPCs grounded in the MBTI framework and the use of a 2S evaluation framework to measure semantic fidelity and stylistic alignment. The value lies in transforming LLMs into more authentic personal agents, enhancing their applicability in daily communication. Experiments revealed that few-shot prompting significantly enhanced semantic fidelity and content similarity across languages, while parameter-efficient fine-tuning via LoRA maintained stylistic and historical consistency, demonstrating the effectiveness of different methods depending on the metric44.
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Ziad Elshaer from unknown institution and colleagues aimed to enhance medical question answering in resource-constrained settings. They proposed the CURE framework, which uses confidence-aware routing and multi-model collaboration to address knowledge gaps without fine-tuning. The innovation points are the adaptive routing mechanism and the use of a confidence detection module to direct queries to appropriate models. The value lies in making advanced medical AI capabilities accessible to smaller healthcare providers and underserved regions. Experiments on MedQA, MedMCQA, and PubMedQA datasets showed that CURE outperformed baselines and other methods, particularly on challenging queries that required complementary expertise, highlighting the importance of model diversity and adaptive collaboration45.
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Akira Okutomi from ToppyMicroServices OÜ and colleagues examined the issue of overconfidence in LLMs, proposing a control-theoretic framework inspired by Kantian philosophy. The main innovation is the introduction of the H-Risk index to quantify epistemic instability, which combines stability margin, condition number, integrated sensitivity, and innovation amplification. The value lies in offering a mathematically explicit and unified structural framework for analyzing and mitigating overconfidence. Experiments on toy linear systems and LLMs confirmed that overconfidence correlates strongly with structural ill-conditioning and that critique-style prompts initially improve but eventually worsen calibration. The study concluded that understanding and managing epistemic stability is crucial for improving the reliability of LLMs46.
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Haziq Mohammad Khalid from Algoverse AI Research and colleagues addressed the performance degradation in multi-turn conversations by proposing ERGO, a framework that monitors and mitigates uncertainty through adaptive context resetting. The main innovation is the use of Shannon entropy to detect spikes in uncertainty and trigger an adaptive prompt consolidation process. The value lies in enhancing the coherence and reliability of conversational AI systems. Experiments on five representative generation tasks using five leading instruction-tuned LLMs showed that ERGO achieved a 56.6% average performance gain over standard baselines, increasing aptitude by 24.7% and reducing unreliability by 35.3%, suggesting that uncertainty-aware methods can significantly improve conversational AI performance47.
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Zhuo-Yang Song from unknown institution focused on the effectiveness of search processes driven by LLMs in AI+Science applications. He proposed a formal theory to measure the prior-structured search space of LLM agents, introducing concepts like fuzzy relation operators and coverage generating functions. The innovation points include a model-agnostic framework for measuring and comparing the search capabilities of different agents. The value lies in providing systematic characterization of reachability and safety constraints, which can aid in designing more efficient and stable search strategies. Experiments on a two-dimensional grid confirmed the unidirectional structures of the safety envelope, supporting the empirical rule that complexity dominates over path diversity in long-horizon tasks48.
Technical Trends
The papers collectively emphasize the need for advanced safety and interpretability measures in LLMs used in healthcare and social applications. Innovations include multi-tiered safety classifications, lightweight defense mechanisms, and frameworks that integrate philosophical principles with AI system analysis. There is a trend towards leveraging diverse data sources, such as multilingual datasets and social media interactions, to improve the contextual understanding and personalization of AI models. Furthermore, several papers highlight the importance of model collaboration and adaptive strategies to enhance performance and reliability, particularly in complex and dynamic environments.
Datasets and Evaluation Metrics
- Qwen3Guard Technical Report: Over 1.19 million samples, covering 119 languages and dialects.
- Circuit Insights: Gemma-2-2b, GPT-2 Small, and Llama-3.2-1B models.
- Detecting Early and Implicit Suicidal Ideation: No specific dataset mentioned, but the methodology involves human-agent conversations.
- Are My Optimized Prompts Compromised?: HarmBench dataset.
- Speculative Model Risk in Healthcare AI: Dataset of 38 consumer health AI solutions and corresponding use-case scenarios.
- Your Next Token Prediction: Human-agent conversations in English, Japanese, and Chinese.
- CURE: MedQA, MedMCQA, and PubMedQA datasets.
- Stable but Miscalibrated: Toy linear systems and LLMs.
- ERGO: Five representative generation tasks using datasets by Laban et al. ([2025]).
Evaluation metrics vary across papers but commonly include accuracy, F1-score, attack success rate (ASR), creativity, coherence, and Shannon entropy. Some papers also use domain-specific metrics such as Normalized Innovation Squared (NIS) and its quantile (NIS_q) for measuring miscalibration in LLMs.
Topic 7: Code Generation and Analysis
Topic Overview
The topic of code generation and analysis has seen significant advancements with the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) and their application in software engineering tasks. LLMs have the potential to revolutionize how we write, understand, and optimize code, enabling developers to automate tedious tasks, debug errors, and summarize complex logic swiftly. However, challenges remain in aligning LLMs’ subword tokenization with the syntactic and semantic structures inherent in programming languages, and in developing efficient and verifiable reward mechanisms for training these models on specialized tasks. Addressing these issues is crucial for the robustness and accuracy of LLMs in code-related tasks and for expanding their applicability to high-stakes domains such as cybersecurity and multimodal fine-grained visual recognition.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Yinxi Li from University of Waterloo and colleagues studied the misalignment between subword tokenization used by LLMs and the syntactic boundaries defined by programming languages, proposing TokDrift, a framework to quantify the sensitivity of code LLMs to semantic-preserving code rewrites that alter tokenization. The main innovation points of this method are its systematic assessment of the impact of tokenization on model performance and its contribution of a dataset and open-source framework for future research. The value lies in providing insights into how LLMs interpret and generate code, crucial for tasks like bug fixing, code summarization, and translation. Experiments on nine code LLMs across three tasks revealed that minor tokenization variations can significantly affect predictions, with larger models exhibiting lower sensitivity, particularly to spacing-related rules, and emphasizing the importance of identifier fragmentation for code understanding and generation capabilities 49.
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Linyue Ma from ModelBest Inc. and colleagues aimed to develop an efficient and verifiable reward mechanism for search-augmented LLMs, proposing Search-Gen-V, a 4B-parameter generative verifier trained via distillation and reinforcement learning. The main innovation is the ’nugget-as-rubric’ paradigm and the automatic pipeline for rubric construction, supporting both static and dynamic corpus-based evaluations. The value lies in enhancing the reliability and efficiency of LLMs in tasks that require external information retrieval, ensuring factual accuracy and scalability. Evaluations on the TREC RAG24 and DeepResearch Bench datasets showed that Search-Gen-V achieved high verification accuracy, demonstrating its effectiveness and efficiency, especially when dealing with complex reports and factual questions 50.
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Parsa Hejabi from University of Southern California and colleagues focused on improving LLMs’ robustness to prompt perturbations, proposing Flip-Flop Consistency (F2C), an unsupervised training method that enhances semantic consistency across various prompt variations. The main innovation points include the introduction of Consensus Cross-Entropy (CCE) and representation alignment loss, which operate without labeled data and reduce the computational overhead of prompt optimization techniques. The value lies in promoting reliability and trustworthiness in high-stakes applications like law and medicine. Experiments on 11 datasets indicated that F2C significantly improved observed agreement and F1 scores, showing robust performance across different domains and unseen prompt variations 51.
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Zhichao Wang from Inflection AI and colleagues sought to enhance LLMs’ instruction-following ability beyond the limitations of Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) by integrating the SFT dataset into a reinforcement learning (RL) framework, resulting in the Reinforcement Learning with Supervised Reward (RLSR) method. The main innovation is the use of cosine similarity in the semantic embedding space to calculate rewards, and the incorporation of two embedding models, SentenceBERT (SB) and Qwen-EM. The value lies in achieving a balance between exploration and exploitation, thereby generating contextually appropriate and diverse responses. Comparisons with SFT, RLHF, RLVR, and RFT on the AlpacaEval benchmark showed that RLSR, particularly with Qwen-EM as the reward model, significantly outperformed SFT, pushing the Qwen-7B (INFINITY) model to its highest performance 52.
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Matan Levi from IBM Research and colleagues addressed the deployment challenges of LLMs in the cybersecurity domain due to the lack of high-quality, domain-specific models and training datasets. They introduced CyberPal 2.0, a suite of cybersecurity-specialized small language models (SLMs), and SecKnowledge 2.0, a dataset enrichment pipeline that integrates expert-in-the-loop guidance and multi-step grounding. The main innovation points are the creation of practical, deployable SLMs for cybersecurity tasks and the emphasis on retaining partial loss on prompts during training. The value lies in advancing cybersecurity capabilities while respecting organizational constraints such as privacy and compliance. Experiments demonstrated that CyberPal 2.0 outperformed baselines and matched or surpassed state-of-the-art models on cybersecurity benchmarks, particularly in threat intelligence and investigation tasks 53.
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Logan Lawrence from University of Massachusetts, Amherst and colleagues tackled the issue of evaluating free-form responses in multimodal LLMs for fine-grained visual classification (FGVC) tasks. They proposed nlg2choice, a two-stage method that first generates a free-form response and then uses constrained decoding to predict the most likely class. The main innovation points are the use of text-only constrained decoding and an early stopping method for retrieval-based problems. The value lies in enhancing classification and retrieval performance on FGVC tasks, which are essential for real-world applications requiring nuanced distinctions. Experiments across seven FGVC datasets showed substantial improvements in accuracy, with the nlg2choiceopen variant achieving further enhancements 54.
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Reid T. Johnson and colleagues explored the degradation in tool calling accuracy and consistency caused by structured output requirements in LLMs, proposing Natural Language Tools (NLT), a framework that uses natural language outputs for tool calls instead of JSON/XML. The main innovation is the decoupling of tool selection from response generation, reducing context length and eliminating rigid function schemas. The value lies in enhancing the reliability and performance of LLM-powered agents across various domains, such as customer service and mental health support. Evaluations across 10 models and 6,400 trials demonstrated significant improvements in tool calling accuracy and reduced output variance, maintaining robust performance even under prompt perturbations 55.
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Mahmood Hegazy from 1 and colleagues addressed the annotation backlog in financial services, proposing MAFA (Multi-Agent Framework for Annotation), a configurable multi-agent system for enterprise-scale annotation. The main innovation points are the dynamic adaptability to any annotation task and the use of ensemble learning and multi-agent systems. The value lies in improving annotation quality and efficiency, which is crucial for enhancing the performance of conversational AI systems. Experiments on diverse datasets showed significant improvements in top-1 accuracy and efficiency, with MAFA processing customer queries more efficiently and achieving high agreement rates with human annotators 56.
Technical Trends
The papers in this collection highlight a shift towards more specialized and domain-adaptive approaches in code generation and analysis. Innovations include the introduction of frameworks that quantify model sensitivity to tokenization changes (TokDrift), novel reward mechanisms for search-augmented LLMs (Search-Gen-V), unsupervised training methods for robustness (Flip-Flop Consistency), and reinforcement learning strategies for improving instruction-following capabilities (RLSR). Additionally, there is a focus on developing small, specialized models for specific domains (CyberPal 2.0 for cybersecurity) and enhancing the flexibility and efficiency of tool calling in agentic systems (Natural Language Tools). The trend also emphasizes the importance of ensemble learning and multi-agent systems for improving annotation efficiency and quality (MAFA).
Datasets and Evaluation Metrics
- TokDrift: Evaluated on nine code LLMs using predefined rewrite rules for identifier naming conventions and spacing.
- Search-Gen-V: Tested on TREC RAG24, DeepResearch Bench, and HotpotQA datasets, using F1 score, Pearson correlation, and precision/recall metrics.
- Flip-Flop Consistency: Evaluated on 11 datasets, measuring observed agreement ($P_{o}$) and $ar{F_{1}}$ scores.
- RLSR: Assessed on the AlpacaEval benchmark, comparing win rates and performance metrics.
- CyberPal 2.0: Evaluated on various cybersecurity benchmarks, including CTIBench-RCM and CTIBench-MCQ, measuring performance gains.
- nlg2choice: Tested on seven FGVC datasets, focusing on classification accuracy and robustness to prompt variations.
- Natural Language Tools: Evaluated across 10 models and 6,400 trials in customer service and mental health domains, measuring tool calling accuracy and output variance.
- MAFA: Evaluated on Banking77, Internal Banking, and CLINIC-150 datasets, using top-1 accuracy, F1-score, and NDCG@$k$ metrics to measure improvements in annotation quality and efficiency.
These studies collectively underscore the importance of aligning LLMs with specific domain needs, refining their tokenization processes, and developing efficient training and evaluation methodologies to ensure robust performance and usability.
Topic 8: Data and Knowledge Management
Topic Overview
Data and Knowledge Management is a critical area in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning, focusing on the efficient handling and utilization of data and knowledge to support various applications, including natural language processing (NLP) tasks like question answering (QA) and text-to-SQL conversion. The accurate retrieval and management of information are essential for ensuring that AI systems can generate responses or queries that are both precise and comprehensive. Research in this domain aims to improve the performance of these systems by addressing issues related to schema linking, multi-hop QA, and the interpretability of large language models (LLMs).
Individual Paper Contributions
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Md Mahadi Hasan Nahid from University of Alberta and colleagues studied the problem of accurate schema linking in Text-to-SQL systems, proposing a context-aware bidirectional schema linking framework to solve the issue of irrelevant context and increased token overhead during SQL generation. The main innovation points include integrating table-first and column-first retrieval strategies with augmentation techniques like question decomposition and condition parsing. The value lies in enhancing the performance of NL2SQL pipelines by treating schema linking as a foundational and independent problem. Experiments on BIRD and Spider datasets demonstrated a significant reduction in the false positive rate while maintaining high recall, concluding that effective schema linking can greatly enhance SQL generation accuracy and efficiency 57.
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Md Mahadi Hasan Nahid from University of Alberta and colleagues addressed the precision-recall trade-off in retrieval for multi-hop QA, proposing PRISM (Precision–Recall Iterative Selection Mechanism), an agentic retrieval framework. The main innovation is the use of specialized agents to break down complex questions and iteratively refine the evidence set to ensure both precision and recall. The value lies in improving the reliability and efficiency of QA systems, especially in demanding domains such as scientific, biomedical, or legal corpora. Evaluations on HotpotQA, 2WikiMultiHopQA, MuSiQue, and MultiHopRAG datasets showed that PRISM outperformed existing baselines in retrieval and end-to-end QA accuracy, highlighting the importance of clean and precise retrieval in multi-hop QA 58.
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Yilun Zheng from Nanyang Technological University and colleagues tackled the redundancy and unreliability of knowledge graphs (KGs) constructed by LLMs for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems. They introduced Deg-Rag, a framework that uses entity resolution and triple reflection to denoise KGs. The main innovation points include a thorough exploration of entity resolution techniques and the impact of KG denoising on RAG performance. The value lies in enhancing the retrieval efficiency and precision of RAG systems, thereby improving their performance in QA tasks. Experiments on the UltraDomain benchmark datasets (Agriculture, CS, Legal, and Mix) showed consistent improvements in comprehensiveness, diversity, and overall quality, achieving these by reducing KG sizes by approximately 40% 59.
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Aayush Karan from Harvard University and colleagues focused on enhancing reasoning capabilities in LLMs through sampling techniques, avoiding the need for reinforcement learning (RL) post-training. They proposed a sampling algorithm based on power distributions and MH-MCMC for eliciting reasoning abilities. The main innovation is leveraging the base model’s likelihoods to resample token subsequences iteratively. The value lies in the potential to improve model performance while maintaining diversity and avoiding the complexities associated with RL post-training. Experiments on tasks like HumanEval, AlpacaEval 2.0, and MATH500 showed that their algorithm outperforms RL-posttraining on out-of-domain tasks and matches its performance on in-domain tasks, with superior multi-shot performance 60.
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Zihao Fu from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and colleagues aimed to understand the internal mechanisms of transformer layers within LLMs, introducing CAST (Compositional Analysis via Spectral Tracking). The main innovation is a probe-free framework that uses spectral analysis and kernel methods to characterize layer behavior. The value lies in providing a deeper insight into the architectural objectives and layer-specific behaviors of both encoder-only and decoder-only models. Experiments on GPT-2, RoBERTa, Llama, and DeepSeek-R1 models revealed unique structural properties and layer dynamics, such as consistent compression-expansion cycles in decoder-only models and the importance of nonlinear dynamics in transformers 61.
Technical Trends
The papers in this collection highlight evolving trends towards more sophisticated and context-aware methods for managing data and knowledge. There is a growing emphasis on addressing the precision-recall trade-off in retrieval, leveraging bidirectional and iterative strategies to refine the retrieval process. Additionally, there is a shift towards understanding and enhancing the reasoning capabilities of LLMs through innovative sampling techniques, rather than relying solely on post-training methods. The interpretability of transformer models is another emerging trend, with frameworks like CAST providing new perspectives on the functional roles of individual layers.
Datasets and Evaluation
The primary datasets used across these papers include:
- Text-to-SQL: BIRD, Spider
- Multi-hop QA: HotpotQA, 2WikiMultiHopQA, MuSiQue, MultiHopRAG
- Knowledge Graph Denoising: UltraDomain (Agriculture, CS, Legal, and Mix)
- Reasoning Tasks: HumanEval, AlpacaEval 2.0, MATH500
- Transformer Analysis: No specific datasets were used; instead, the evaluation was based on the analysis of pre-existing transformer models like GPT-2, RoBERTa, Llama, and DeepSeek-R1.
Evaluation metrics varied according to the task:
- Text-to-SQL: Recall, False Positive Rate
- Multi-hop QA: Exact Match (EM), F1 Score
- Knowledge Graph Denoising: Comprehensiveness, Diversity, Empowerment, Overall Quality
- Reasoning Tasks: Pass@$k$, Likelihood, Confidence Regions
- Transformer Analysis: Interpretable Metrics derived from Singular Value Decomposition, Kernel Analysis with RFF, Centered Kernel Alignment (CKA)
These metrics collectively aim to assess the effectiveness, precision, recall, and overall quality of the proposed methods in their respective tasks, contributing to the advancement of data and knowledge management in AI systems.
Topic 9: Simulation and Synthetic Data
Topic Overview
The topic of simulation and synthetic data focuses on leveraging artificial intelligence, particularly large language models (LLMs), to generate realistic and diverse datasets that can be used for training and evaluating AI systems. This is especially relevant in areas such as digital agent training and hardware design, where collecting real-world data is challenging and expensive. By creating synthetic data, researchers aim to overcome these limitations, allowing for more robust, adaptable, and efficient AI systems. The importance of this research lies in its potential to democratize access to high-quality training data, thereby accelerating advancements in AI technologies across various domains.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Yiming Wang from Harvard University and colleagues studied the difficulty and high cost associated with gathering large-scale, high-quality training trajectories for digital agents interacting with diverse User Interfaces (UIs). They proposed UI-Simulator, a scalable paradigm that uses LLMs to simulate UI environments, generating structured UI states and transitions to create diverse training trajectories. The main innovation points include a guided rollout process and a trajectory wrapper to ensure coherence and high quality. The value lies in enhancing the adaptability and robustness of digital agents, making their training more efficient and effective. Experiments on the WebArena and AndroidWorld benchmarks showed improvements in success rates (SR) for digital agents trained on synthetic data, with UI-Simulator-F achieving SRs of 6.28% and 8.6% on WebArena and AndroidWorld, respectively, while UI-Simulator-Grow-R reached SRs of 7.14% and 13.4%. These results indicate that UI-Simulator can effectively enhance base models’ performance and generalization ability, even without direct exposure to real-world test environments 62.
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Manar Abdelatty from Brown University and colleagues addressed the lack of comprehensive evaluation for the efficiency of hardware designs generated by LLMs, particularly in terms of synthesis metrics like area, delay, and power. They introduced Pluto, a benchmark and evaluation framework that assesses both functional correctness and synthesis efficiency of LLM-generated Verilog designs. The main innovation points are the inclusion of self-checking testbenches, multiple Pareto-optimal reference implementations for each metric, and an adapted eff@k metric to evaluate efficiency. The value lies in providing a robust method for evaluating LLM-generated hardware code, thus driving advancements in hardware-focused LLM research. Experiments revealed that state-of-the-art LLMs can achieve high functional correctness but lag behind in synthesis efficiency metrics, underscoring the current limitations of LLMs in generating efficient hardware code 63.
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Yunwen Li from [institution name missing] and colleagues focused on the deficiency of LLMs in generating high-quality creative writing in Chinese, particularly due to a lack of training data and process-level supervision. They introduced COIG-Writer, a dataset that includes detailed thought processes behind the creation of texts, aiming to address the gap in existing datasets that only provide input-output pairs. The main innovation points are the reverse-engineering methodology to extract reasoning chains and the empirical validation of a compositional hypothesis for creative writing. The value lies in improving the cultural authenticity and stylistic diversity of AI-generated content, especially in non-English contexts. Experiments showed a 62.75% win rate against a general-purpose model baseline, indicating significant improvements in Chinese creative writing performance when process supervision is applied 64.
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Shuangshuang Ying from [institution name missing] and colleagues tackled the issue of misalignment between current preference learning methods and subjective quality assessment needed for creative writing tasks. They introduced WritingPreferenceBench, a cross-lingual dataset designed to isolate subjective writing preferences from objective quality signals. The main innovation points are the focus on dimensions like creativity, stylistic sophistication, and emotional resonance, and the evaluation of generative reward models with reasoning. The value lies in providing a benchmark specifically tailored for subjective preference modeling, addressing gaps in existing benchmarks. Experiments demonstrated that generative reward models with reasoning achieve significantly higher accuracy (81.8%) compared to sequence-based reward models (52.7%) and zero-shot language model judges (53.9%), indicating the necessity of structured intermediate reasoning for subjective preference tasks 65.
Technical Trends
The papers in this collection reflect a trend towards utilizing LLMs for generating synthetic data and improving the training and evaluation processes of AI systems. They highlight the shift from merely producing functional outputs to focusing on the efficiency and quality of those outputs, whether in terms of hardware synthesis metrics or subjective writing preferences. Each paper employs innovative techniques to address specific challenges, such as the guided rollout process for UI simulations, the development of comprehensive benchmarks for hardware design, and the introduction of detailed thought processes for creative writing. There is a clear emphasis on developing methodologies that can enhance the performance of AI systems in specialized tasks, leveraging the strengths of LLMs while mitigating their weaknesses through strategic design and evaluation frameworks.
Datasets and Evaluation
- UI-Simulator: Uses WebArena and AndroidWorld benchmarks to evaluate the performance of digital agents trained on synthetic UI data.
- Pluto: A benchmark suite with 114 problems for evaluating the synthesis efficiency of LLM-generated Verilog designs, featuring self-checking testbenches and Pareto-optimal reference implementations.
- COIG-Writer: A dataset for Chinese creative writing that includes reverse-engineered prompts, reasoning processes, and final texts, spanning 51 genres and comprising 1,665 triplets.
- WritingPreferenceBench: A cross-lingual dataset focusing on subjective writing preferences, consisting of 1,800 human-validated preference pairs across 8 genres in English and Chinese, evaluated using accuracy metrics for creativity, sophistication, and emotional resonance.
Topic 10: Evaluation and Testing
Topic Overview
The topic of “Evaluation and Testing” in the realm of large language models (LLMs) focuses on developing methodologies and frameworks to predict and improve the performance of these models on specific tasks. Accurate performance prediction and efficient testing strategies are critical for guiding the development and deployment of LLMs, ensuring that they meet the desired standards of quality and efficiency without excessive resource expenditure. This area of research is essential for optimizing model design, reducing costs, and enhancing the practical applicability of LLMs in real-world scenarios.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Kyle Montgomery from UC Santa Cruz and colleagues studied the inadequacy of conventional neural scaling laws in predicting downstream task performance of LLMs, particularly focusing on the influence of context. They proposed a context-aware scaling framework to solve this core problem. The main innovation points of this method are modeling aggregate task performance as a product of two saturating power laws in training compute and context length, with a sigmoid penalty term for context exceeding the model’s capacity. The value lies in providing a more accurate and interpretable tool for understanding the relationship between compute, context, and performance, which can guide the efficient development of LLMs. Experiments on extended-context variants of Llama-2-7B and Llama-2-13B models across 65,500 unique instances of three tasks—arithmetic reasoning, common sense reasoning, and machine translation—showed an average prediction error of 0.010 for arithmetic reasoning, 0.037 for common sense reasoning, and 0.007 for machine translation, demonstrating the framework’s robustness and generalization capability66.
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Rui Wang from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and colleagues addressed the challenge of training deep research web agents to perform complex information aggregation and reasoning tasks on the dynamic and heterogeneous web. They introduced the ‘Explore to Evolve’ method and the WebAggregatorQA dataset, consisting of about 10K query-answer pairs generated through proactive online web exploration and automatic synthesis of aggregation logics. The main innovation points are the automation of generating complex web agent tasks and providing a benchmark that evaluates both information seeking and aggregation. The value lies in advancing the capabilities of web agents to handle multifaceted information sources and perform tasks at a level closer to human analytical skills. Experiments comparing the performance of various models, including WebAggregator-32B, showed that it surpassed most strong baselines, such as GPT-4.1 and WebShaper, on both GAIA-text and WebAggregatorQA datasets, indicating the quality and relevance of the dataset for enhancing web agent capabilities67.
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Lifu Tu from Salesforce AI Research and colleagues tackled the subpar performance of smaller multilingual embedding models (<1 B parameters) in retrieval tasks compared to larger models (>1 B parameters). They proposed a retrofitting method to enhance the retrieval performance of smaller models by leveraging synthetic multilingual training data derived from the mC4 corpus. The main innovation points include the generation of synthetic data across multiple languages and the use of hard negative sampling and task diversity in training data. The value lies in making smaller models more viable for practical applications by reducing computational costs and resource requirements while maintaining high performance. Experiments demonstrated that the proposed model, with approximately 305M parameters, achieved a score of 60.56 on the MMTEB (Multilingual) retrieval task category, outperforming or matching the performance of current strong 7B models and performing competitively across other task categories68.
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Kyle Montgomery from UC Santa Cruz and colleagues also explored the high computational cost associated with using generative verifiers for test-time scaling in LLMs to improve performance on complex reasoning tasks. They proposed budget-aware test-time scaling via discriminative verification techniques combined with self-consistency, introducing hybrid methods like Weighted Self-Consistency (WSC) and Pessimistic Verification (PV). The main innovation points are the development of more efficient verification methods and the systematic empirical analysis under equalized compute budgets. The value lies in enabling practical applications of LLMs by reducing compute costs while maintaining or improving performance. Experiments on the AIME2025 benchmark showed that hybrid discriminative verification methods outperformed the state-of-the-art generative verification by up to 15.3% under a fixed compute budget, and consistently outperformed simple self-consistency (SC) by up to 5.1% with minimal compute overhead. The results indicated that increasing the number of candidate solutions sampled ($N$) was more beneficial than scaling the number of verifications per candidate solution ($M$) under realistic inference budgets69.
Technical Trends
The papers collectively highlight a trend towards refining and extending existing scaling laws and verification techniques to better capture the nuances affecting LLM performance. This includes integrating context awareness and discriminative verification methods to provide more precise performance predictions and efficient testing strategies. There is also a growing interest in optimizing smaller models to achieve performance comparable to larger ones, thereby making LLMs more accessible and sustainable for widespread application.
Datasets and Evaluation
- Llama-2-7B and Llama-2-13B models: Used in the first paper to validate the context-aware scaling framework across three tasks: arithmetic reasoning, common sense reasoning, and machine translation.
- WebAggregatorQA Dataset: Introduced in the second paper, comprising approximately 10K query-answer pairs designed for training deep research web agents in complex information aggregation and reasoning tasks.
- MMTEB (Multilingual): Employed in the third paper to evaluate the retrieval performance of retrofitted smaller multilingual models.
- AIME2025 Benchmark: Utilized in the fourth paper to assess the efficiency and accuracy of budget-aware test-time scaling methods.
These datasets and benchmarks play a crucial role in evaluating the performance and efficiency improvements brought forth by the proposed methods, showcasing advancements in both model scalability and task-specific performance enhancements.
Topic 11: misc
Topic Overview
The miscellaneous (misc) topic encompasses a variety of research areas in artificial intelligence and machine learning, ranging from the optimization of mixture-of-expert models to the creation of specialized datasets for underrepresented cuisines. Each paper in this category addresses specific challenges within their respective domains, aiming to advance the state-of-the-art in their application areas. The overarching goal is to develop more efficient, adaptable, and inclusive AI systems that can handle complex tasks and data from diverse sources, enhancing their practical utility and user experience.
Individual Paper Contributions
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Guinan Su from Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and colleagues studied the suboptimal routing decisions made by Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) models during deployment, particularly in real-world environments where distribution shifts can degrade performance. They proposed a data-free, online test-time rerouting framework to continuously optimize expert selection based on input context. The main innovation points include the use of additive vectors to modify router logits and a dynamic layer selection strategy to balance computational efficiency and performance. The value lies in improving the adaptability and robustness of MoE models without relying on additional data, thus enhancing their practical applicability in various domains. Experiments on reasoning and code generation benchmarks such as MMLU-redux, HumanEval, MBPP-sanitized, GSM8K, and MATH500 showed significant improvements in task-specific performance metrics compared to In-Context Learning (ICL) and C3PO baselines, concluding that the continuous rerouting process effectively addresses the limitations of traditional routing mechanisms70.
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Jonas Geiping from ELLIS Institute Tübingen and colleagues addressed the inefficiency in generating text from autoregressive recurrent-depth models, focusing on the sequential nature of layer repetition that slows down generation processes. They introduced a novel method to parallelize the generation process using diffusion forcing principles, connecting recurrent-depth models with diffusion models. The key innovation is the application of diffusion forcing to accelerate text generation, complemented by stabilizing components such as momentum and noise injection. The value of this work is in enhancing the scalability and efficiency of recurrent-depth models, making them more suitable for real-time applications. Evaluations on benchmarks like GSM8K, MATH500, HumanEval, and MBPP demonstrated speedups of around 5x with minimal trade-offs in generation quality, outperforming well-tuned speculative decoding baselines, suggesting that the proposed method is robust and adaptable through hyperparameter tuning71.
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I-Fan Lin from [Institution] and colleagues tackled the problem of intent clustering in short texts without relying on labeled data, which is crucial for developing intent-aware information systems and chatbots. They proposed a method that uses shared pseudo-labels constructed by lightweight Large Language Models (LLMs) to cluster texts by intent. The main innovation is the iterative multi-label classification process that refines pseudo-labels, allowing the number of clusters to emerge naturally. The value lies in simplifying the clustering process and reducing reliance on expensive labeled data, thus broadening the applicability of intent clustering in various scenarios. Empirical experiments on Bank77, CLINC150, Mtop, and Massive datasets showed superior performance metrics in terms of NMI and Clustering Accuracy compared to baseline methods like KeyphraseCluster, SPILL, and others, especially when utilizing Gemma and Qwen LLMs72.
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Qing Yang from [Institution] and colleagues focused on enhancing the emotional expressiveness of Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems, addressing the issue of emotionally flat synthesized speech. They developed the RLAIF-SPA framework, integrating Reinforcement Learning from AI Feedback (RLAIF) to optimize emotional and semantic aspects of speech. The core innovations are the Prosodic Label Alignment (PLA) and Semantic Accuracy Feedback (SAF) components, which respectively improve emotional quality and speech clarity. The value is in reducing the need for costly emotion annotations and achieving near-human quality in emotional TTS synthesis. Experiments on LibriSpeech and ESD datasets revealed significant improvements in WER, SIM-O, and human evaluations for emotional fidelity and overall quality, demonstrating the effectiveness of the GRPO method and prosodic-emotional label rewards73.
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Perapard Ngokpol from Thammasat School of Engineering and colleagues explored the ability of large language models (LLMs) to maintain character-specific traits and narratives when role-playing iconic superheroes from different contexts and timelines. They introduced the Beyond One World benchmark dataset and an evaluation framework that assesses both internal deliberation and external action consistency. The main innovation is the Think–Act Matching metric, which quantifies the alignment between reasoning and actions. The value lies in providing a rigorous test for character-grounded role-play capabilities, enhancing the realism and reliability of applications like virtual assistants and interactive storytelling. Experiments indicated that chain-of-thought prompting improves narrative coherence but can reduce factual accuracy, and that cross-version generalization remains challenging, even for high-performing models74.
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Darko Sasanski from [Institution] and colleagues aimed to address the underrepresentation of Macedonian cuisine in digital research by creating a structured dataset of Macedonian recipes. They developed a parsing pipeline to normalize ingredient descriptions and extract quantitative information, enabling the analysis of ingredient co-occurrence patterns using PMI and Lift scores. The value is in expanding computational gastronomy to include regional culinary traditions, supporting the development of culturally tailored food-related applications. Comparative analysis with Recipe1M+ revealed distinct ingredient usage and co-occurrence patterns in Macedonian recipes, indicating a heavy emphasis on traditional baking and cooking ingredients and culturally specific combinations75.
Technical Trends
The papers in this topic showcase a trend towards enhancing model efficiency, adaptability, and cultural inclusivity. Innovations in rerouting strategies for MoE models, parallelization of generation processes, and the development of data-free methods for clustering and role-playing are evident. There is also a growing interest in using reinforcement learning and diffusion principles to optimize model performance in specific tasks, such as TTS and text generation. The inclusion of cultural-specific datasets and metrics reflects a broader movement towards making AI systems more representative and useful across diverse cultures and contexts.
Datasets and Evaluation Metrics
- Mixture-of-Expert Models: MMLU-redux, HumanEval, MBPP-sanitized, GSM8K, MATH500
- Recurrent-Depth Models: GSM8K, MATH500, HumanEval, MBPP
- Intent Clustering: Bank77, CLINC150, Mtop, Massive
- Emotional TTS: LibriSpeech, ESD
- Character-Grounded Role-Play: Beyond One World (Canon Events and Moral Dilemmas)
- Macedonian Recipes: Macedonian Recipe Dataset, Recipe1M+
Evaluation metrics include task-specific performance indicators, word error rate (WER), speaker similarity (SIM-O), clustering accuracy (Acc), normalized mutual information (NMI), and think-act matching scores. These metrics help in quantifying the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed methods in their respective domains.
References
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LaSeR: Reinforcement Learning with Last-Token Self-Rewarding ↩︎
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Code-driven Number Sequence Calculation: Enhancing the inductive Reasoning Abilities of Large Language Models ↩︎
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MathMist: A Parallel Multilingual Benchmark Dataset for Mathematical Problem Solving and Reasoning ↩︎
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Think Globally, Group Locally: Evaluating LLMs Using Multi-Lingual Word Grouping Games ↩︎
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MathCanvas: Intrinsic Visual Chain-of-Thought for Multimodal Mathematical Reasoning ↩︎
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ColorBench: Benchmarking Mobile Agents with Graph-Structured Framework for Complex Long-Horizon Tasks ↩︎
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Finding Answers in Thought Matters: Revisiting Evaluation on Large Language Models with Reasoning ↩︎
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Suicidal Comment Tree Dataset: Enhancing Risk Assessment and Prediction Through Contextual Analysis ↩︎
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TITAN: Graph-Executable Reasoning for Cyber Threat Intelligence ↩︎
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MetaBench: A Multi-task Benchmark for Assessing LLMs in Metabolomics ↩︎
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AI-Powered Early Diagnosis of Mental Health Disorders from Real-World Clinical Conversations ↩︎
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Midtraining Bridges Pretraining and Posttraining Distributions ↩︎
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Assessing Socio-Cultural Alignment and Technical Safety of Sovereign LLMs ↩︎
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Scaling Test-Time Compute to Achieve IOI Gold Medal with Open-Weight Models ↩︎
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Harmonizing Diverse Models: A Layer-wise Merging Strategy for Consistent Generation ↩︎
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MedTrust-RAG: Evidence Verification and Trust Alignment for Biomedical Question Answering ↩︎
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DialectGen: Benchmarking and Improving Dialect Robustness in Multimodal Generation ↩︎
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Just-In-Time Objectives: A General Approach for Specialized AI Interactions ↩︎
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AutoRubric-R1V: Rubric-Based Generative Rewards for Faithful Multimodal Reasoning ↩︎
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TRI-DEP: A Trimodal Comparative Study for Depression Detection Using Speech, Text, and EEG ↩︎
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Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Face Recognition ↩︎
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Joint Modeling of Big Five and HEXACO for Multimodal Apparent Personality-trait Recognition ↩︎
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Instructions are all you need: Self-supervised Reinforcement Learning for Instruction Following ↩︎
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DPRF: A Generalizable Dynamic Persona Refinement Framework for Optimizing Behavior Alignment Between Personalized LLM Role-Playing Agents and Humans ↩︎
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E2Edev: Benchmarking Large Language Models in End-to-End Software Development Task ↩︎
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IMAGINE: Integrating Multi-Agent System into One Model for Complex Reasoning and Planning ↩︎
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Efficient Seq2seq Coreference Resolution Using Entity Representations ↩︎
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LiRA: Linguistic Robust Anchoring for Cross-lingual Large Language Models ↩︎
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Evaluating & Reducing Deceptive Dialogue From Language Models with Multi-turn RL ↩︎
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MERLIN: A Testbed for Multilingual Multimodal Entity Recognition and Linking ↩︎
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MoM: Mixtures of Scenario-Aware Document Memories for Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems ↩︎
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PluriHop: Exhaustive, Recall-Sensitive QA over Distractor-Rich Corpora ↩︎
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Constraint-Driven Small Language Models Based on Agent and OpenAlex Knowledge Graph: Mining Conceptual Pathways and Discovering Innovation Points in Academic Papers ↩︎
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Circuit Insights: Towards Interpretability Beyond Activations ↩︎
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Detecting Early and Implicit Suicidal Ideation via Longitudinal and Information Environment Signals on Social Media ↩︎
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Are My Optimized Prompts Compromised? Exploring Vulnerabilities of LLM-based Optimizers ↩︎
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Speculative Model Risk in Healthcare AI: Using Storytelling to Surface Unintended Harms ↩︎
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Your Next Token Prediction: A Multilingual Benchmark for Personalized Response Generation ↩︎
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CURE: Confidence-driven Unified Reasoning Ensemble Framework for Medical Question Answering ↩︎
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Stable but Miscalibrated: A Kantian View on Overconfidence from Filters to Large Language Models ↩︎
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ERGO: Entropy-guided Resetting for Generation Optimization in Multi-turn Language Models ↩︎
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Where to Search: Measure the Prior-Structured Search Space of LLM Agents ↩︎
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TokDrift: When LLM Speaks in Subwords but Code Speaks in Grammar ↩︎
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An Efficient Rubric-based Generative Verifier for Search-Augmented LLMs ↩︎
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Flip-Flop Consistency: Unsupervised Training for Robustness to Prompt Perturbations in LLMs ↩︎
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RLSR: Reinforcement Learning with Supervised Reward Outperforms SFT in Instruction Following ↩︎
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You May Speak Freely: Improving the Fine-Grained Visual Recognition Capabilities of Multimodal Large Language Models with Answer Extraction ↩︎
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Natural Language Tools: A Natural Language Approach to Tool Calling In Large Language Agents ↩︎
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MAFA: A Multi-Agent Framework for Enterprise-Scale Annotation with Configurable Task Adaptation ↩︎
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Rethinking Schema Linking: A Context-Aware Bidirectional Retrieval Approach for Text-to-SQL ↩︎
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PRISM: Agentic Retrieval with LLMs for Multi-Hop Question Answering ↩︎
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Less is More: Denoising Knowledge Graphs For Retrieval Augmented Generation ↩︎
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Reasoning with Sampling: Your Base Model is Smarter Than You Think ↩︎
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CAST: Compositional Analysis via Spectral Tracking for Understanding Transformer Layer Functions ↩︎
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LLMs as Scalable, General-Purpose Simulators For Evolving Digital Agent Training ↩︎
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Pluto: A Benchmark for Evaluating Efficiency of LLM-generated Hardware Code ↩︎
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COIG-Writer: A High-Quality Dataset for Chinese Creative Writing with Thought Processes ↩︎
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Beyond Correctness: Evaluating Subjective Writing Preferences Across Cultures ↩︎
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Predicting Task Performance with Context-aware Scaling Laws ↩︎
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Explore to Evolve: Scaling Evolved Aggregation Logic via Proactive Online Exploration for Deep Research Agents ↩︎
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Retrofitting Small Multilingual Models for Retrieval: Matching 7B Performance with 300M Parameters ↩︎
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Budget-aware Test-time Scaling via Discriminative Verification ↩︎
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Rewiring Experts on the Fly:Continuous Rerouting for Better Online Adaptation in Mixture-of-Expert models ↩︎
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Efficient Parallel Samplers for Recurrent-Depth Models and Their Connection to Diffusion Language Models ↩︎
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RLAIF-SPA: Optimizing LLM-based Emotional Speech Synthesis via RLAIF ↩︎
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Beyond One World: Benchmarking Super Heros in Role-Playing Across Multiversal Contexts ↩︎
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Building a Macedonian Recipe Dataset: Collection, Parsing, and Comparative Analysis ↩︎