Shanks: Simultaneous Hearing and Thinking for Spoken Language Models (2026.acl-long)
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Cheng-Han Chiang, Xiaofei Wang, Linjie Li, Chung-Ching Lin, Kevin Lin, Shujie Liu, Zhendong Wang, Zhengyuan Yang, Hung-yi Lee, Lijuan Wang
| Challenge: | Existing large language models and spoken language models (SLMs) begin thinking and taking actions only after the user has finished their turn. |
| Approach: | They propose a general inference framework that enables SLMs to generate unspoken chain-of-thought reasoning while listening to user input. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework enhances real-time user–SLM interaction in two scenarios. |
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