Papers by Liang Yao

40 papers
RiOT: Efficient Prompt Refinement with Residual Optimization Tree (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing methods for automatic prompt optimization face two challenges: lack of diversity and semantic drift.
Approach: They propose a framework for automatic prompt optimization that iteratively refines prompts through text gradients and selects the best prompt using perplexity.
Outcome: The proposed framework outperforms existing prompt optimization methods and manual prompting on commonsense, mathematical, logical, temporal, and semantic reasoning benchmarks.
Enhancing Reinforcement Learning for Radiology Report Generation with Evidence-aware Rewards and Self-correcting Preference Learning (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Recent reinforcement learning approaches have advanced radiology report generation (RRG) however, there are two limitations: report-level rewards offer limited evidence-grounded guidance for clinical faithfulness .
Approach: They propose a method that uses group-wise evidence-aware alignment rewards and self-correcting preference learning to build a reliable, disease-agnostic preference dataset without human supervision.
Outcome: ESC-RL promotes clinically faithful, disease-aligned reward and supports continual self-improvement during training.
A Mousetrap: Fooling Large Reasoning Models for Jailbreak with Chain of Iterative Chaos (2025.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have advanced beyond traditional Large Language Models, yet they pose heightened safety risks.
Approach: They propose a first jailbreak attack targeting Large Reasoning Models . they exploit a Chaos Machine component to transform attack prompts with diverse one-to-one mappings based on the reasoning chain .
Outcome: The proposed attack exploits the unique vulnerabilities of LRMs by integrating a Chaos Machine. success rates of the mousetrap attack are as high as 96%, 86% and 98% respectively.
GMH: A General Multi-hop Reasoning Model for KG Completion (2021.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Knowledge graphs are incomplete with many facts missing, causing performance bottlenecks in many applications.
Approach: They propose a general multi-hop reasoning task that can be formulated as a search process and can be extended to long-distance reasoning scenarios.
Outcome: The proposed model improves on baselines in short and long distance reasoning scenarios.
UnCo: Uncertainty-Driven Collaborative Framework of Large and Small Models for Grounded Multimodal NER (2025.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Existing methods to identify unseen multimodal entities struggle with limited knowledge and generalization.
Approach: They propose a framework that leverages the strengths of small fine-tuned models and MLLMs to generate unambiguous predictions.
Outcome: Extensive experiments show that the proposed framework retains the in-domain knowledge of small models while utilizing the capabilities of MLLMs to handle unseen entities.
EventRAG: Enhancing LLM Generation with Event Knowledge Graphs (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing approaches to text generation often neglect event structures that shape real-world narratives.
Approach: They propose a framework that integrates structured event semantics with iterative retrieval and inference to enhance text generation.
Outcome: Experiments on UltraDomain and MultiHopRAG show that the proposed framework outperforms baseline RAG systems in generation effectiveness, logical consistency, and multi-hop reasoning accuracy.
SPARD: Self-Paced Curriculum for RL Alignment via Integrating Reward Dynamics and Data Utility (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Large Language Models (LLMs) are shifting the focus from single verifiable tasks toward complex, open-ended real-world scenarios.
Approach: They propose a framework that automatically adjusts reward weights and data importance to synchronize learning intent with data utility for optimal performance.
Outcome: The proposed framework improves model capabilities across all domains and scales.
An Auxiliary Task Boosted Multi-task Learning Method for Service Account Retrieval with Limited Human Annotation (2023.emnlp-industry)

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Challenge: Existing approaches to service account retrieval have limited human annotation, resulting in labor-intensive and time-consuming tasks.
Approach: They propose an Auxiliary task Boosted Multi-Task Learning method which introduces multiple auxiliary tasks and enhances the performance of the main task, service account retrieval.
Outcome: The proposed method improves the performance of the main task, service account retrieval.
SCOP: Evaluating the Comprehension Process of Large Language Models from a Cognitive View (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: despite the potential of large language models, it is difficult to fully count on them in real-world scenarios.
Approach: They propose to examine how LLMs perform during the comprehension process from a cognitive perspective.
Outcome: The proposed model analyzes how LLMs perform during the comprehension process from a cognitive perspective.
Robust Tool Use via Fission-GRPO: Learning to Recover from Execution Errors (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Large language models (LLMs) can call tools effectively, but they remain brittle in multi-turn execution.
Approach: They propose a framework that converts execution errors into on-policy corrective supervision within the RL training loop.
Outcome: The proposed framework improves the error recovery rate of Qwen3-8B by 5.7% absolute and overall accuracy by 4.0% on BFCL v4 Multi-Turn.
Fact-Tree Reasoning for N-ary Question Answering over Knowledge Graphs (2022.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Current Question Answering over Knowledge Graphs (KGQA) tasks focus on binary facts, but neglect n-ary facts.
Approach: They propose a new fact-tree reasoning framework that transforms the question into a fact tree and performs iterative fact reasoning on the fact tree to infer the correct answer.
Outcome: The proposed framework performs iterative fact reasoning on the fact tree to infer the correct answer.
Why Supervised Fine-Tuning Fails to Learn: A Systematic Study of Incomplete Learning in Large Language Models (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Incomplete learning is widespread and heterogeneous in large language models . authors identify five recurrent sources of incomplete learning: missing prerequisite knowledge, conflicts between SFT supervision and pre-training knowledge, internal inconsistencies within SFT data, left-side forgetting during sequential fine-tuning, and insufficient optimization for rare or complex patterns.
Approach: They propose a diagnostic-first framework that maps incomplete learning to causes . they identify five recurrent sources of incomplete learning: missing prerequisite knowledge, conflicts between supervision and pre-training knowledge, internal inconsistencies, left-side forgetting during sequential fine-tuning, and insufficient optimization for rare or complex patterns.
Outcome: The proposed framework maps incomplete learning to causes using observable training and inference signals.
Domain Transfer based Data Augmentation for Neural Query Translation (2020.coling-main)

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Challenge: Query translation (QT) is a critical factor in successful cross-lingual information retrieval (CLIR).
Approach: They propose to extend query translation (QT) with a domain transfer procedure to revise synthetic candidates to search-aware examples.
Outcome: The proposed method outperforms baselines and domain transfer methods on translation quality and retrieval accuracy.
Towards Better Graph-based Cross-document Relation Extraction via Non-bridge Entity Enhancement and Prediction Debiasing (2024.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing studies on relation extraction ignore non-bridge entities, leading to bias during inference.
Approach: They propose a graph-based cross-document Relation Extraction model with non-bridge entity enhancement and prediction debiasing that integrates non-cross entities with target entities and bridge entities.
Outcome: The proposed model outperforms baseline models on open and closed datasets.
Not All Parameters Are Created Equal: Smart Isolation Boosts Fine-Tuning Performance (2025.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach significantly alleviates task interference and forgetting.
Approach: They propose a framework for supervised fine-tuning for large language models . they first fine-tail the model on each task to identify its core parameter regions .
Outcome: The proposed framework outperforms vanilla fine-tuning and baselines on multiple public benchmarks on reasoning, dialogue, instruction following, and more.
Semantic Relation-aware Difference Representation Learning for Change Captioning (2021.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing methods to describe semantic change in images with distractors are difficult to learn .
Approach: They propose a semantic relation-aware difference representation learning network to explicitly learn the difference representation in the existence of distractors.
Outcome: The proposed network achieves state-of-the-art performance on CLEVR-Change and Spot-the -Diff datasets.
Empirical Study on Data Attributes Insufficiency of Evaluation Benchmarks for LLMs (2025.coling-main)

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Challenge: Existing benchmarks for evaluating large language models neglect key qualitative data attributes that can significantly impact the final rankings of LLMs.
Approach: They propose a framework with three modules designed to assess diversity, redundancy, and difficulty.
Outcome: The proposed framework systematically incorporates diversity, redundancy, and difficulty attributes and shows that they influence the ranking of LLMs.
EducationQ: Evaluating LLMs’ Teaching Capabilities Through Multi-Agent Dialogue Framework (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used as educational tools, yet evaluating their teaching capabilities remains challenging due to the resource-intensive nature of teacher-student interactions.
Approach: They propose a multi-agent dialogue framework that efficiently assesses teaching capabilities through simulated dynamic educational scenarios.
Outcome: The proposed framework outperforms open-source models on 1,498 questions across 13 disciplines and 10 difficulty levels on 1,400 questions.
Reason Only When Needed: Efficient Generative Reward Modeling via Model-Internal Uncertainty (2026.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing approaches to generating reward models rely on voting-based mechanisms to evaluate CoT outputs.
Approach: They propose an efficient generative reward modeling framework grounded in model-internal uncertainty.
Outcome: The proposed framework reduces inference cost while improving answer accuracy.
Empathy in Diversity: Personalized Depression and Anxiety Therapy via Dialogue State Tracking and Patient-Aware Planning (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Recent efforts have turned to large language models (LLMs) as therapeutic agents for psychological therapy tasks, yet robustness across diverse patients remains underexplored.
Approach: They propose a realistic role-play protocol for evaluating therapeutic dialogue agents and a de-identified, expert-annotated corpus of therapist–patient dialogues.
Outcome: The proposed framework outperforms baselines on therapeutic outcomes and dialogue quality while improving conversational efficiency.
Editing Conceptual Knowledge for Large Language Models (2024.findings-emnlp)

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Challenge: Existing knowledge editing methods can modify concept-level definitions, but they can distort instantial knowledge in LLMs, leading to poor performance.
Approach: They construct a benchmark dataset ConceptEdit and establish new metrics for evaluation to investigate the editing capability of LLMs.
Outcome: The proposed methods can modify concept definitions but can distort instantial knowledge in LLMs, leading to poor performance.
Unsupervised Preference-Aware Language Identification (2022.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing studies do not consider inter-personal variations due to the lack of user annotated training data.
Approach: They propose to use user preferences to identify ambiguous texts in multilingual applications without user annotated training data to build a preference-aware LID model.
Outcome: The proposed model significantly outperforms existing LID systems on handling ambiguous texts.
PRIME: A Process-Outcome Alignment Benchmark for Verifiable Reasoning in Mathematics and Engineering (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Current outcome-centric verification paradigms neglect potential errors in the derivation process.
Approach: They propose a process-aware RLVR training paradigm utilizing verifiers selected via **PRIME**.
Outcome: The proposed approach outperforms the baseline verification paradigm on AIME24, AIME25, and Beyond-AIME models.
DeepPlanner: Scaling Planning Capability for Deep Research Agents via Advantage Shaping (2026.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing approaches to planning involve implicit planning or introduce explicit planners without systematically optimizing the planning stage.
Approach: They propose an end-to-end RL framework that enhances the planning capabilities of deep research agents.
Outcome: Experiments show that DeepPlanner improves planning quality and achieves state-of-the-art results under a lower training budget.
Chain-of-Talkers (CoTalk): Fast Human Annotation of Dense Image Captions (2025.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Existing approaches for optimizing human annotation efforts are limited . et al., 2015) suggest that densely annotated image captions improve vision-language alignment .
Approach: They propose an AI-in-the-loop methodology to maximize the number of annotated samples and improve their comprehensiveness under fixed budget constraints.
Outcome: The proposed method improves annotation speed and retrieval performance over the parallel method.
WebAgent-R1: Training Web Agents via End-to-End Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learning (2025.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Existing work on reinforcement learning has focused on single-turn tasks such as solving math problems.
Approach: They propose a framework that learns directly from online interactions by asynchronously generating diverse trajectories, guided by binary rewards depending on task success.
Outcome: Experiments on the WebArena-Lite benchmark show that the framework outperforms state-of-the-art methods and strong proprietary models.
G-Cap: A Game Character Caption Generator (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing studies on Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) primarily focus on real-world scenarios, leaving surreal, highly stylized, and semantically hybrid virtual-world situations significantly underexplored.
Approach: They propose to use a manually annotated benchmark to evaluate LVLMs' ability to perceive and describe game character from the virtual-world.
Outcome: The proposed task evaluates LVLMs’ ability to perceive and describe game character from the virtual-world.
TAG : Type Auxiliary Guiding for Code Comment Generation (2020.acl-main)

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Challenge: Existing code comment generation approaches ignore type information of interpretation of the code, e.g., operator, string, etc. Existing approaches ignore the type information due to the hierarchical dependence among the type.
Approach: They propose an encoder-decoder framework which considers the source code as an N-ary tree with type information associated with each node.
Outcome: The proposed framework is based on a Type Auxiliary Guiding encoder-decoder framework and a type-restricted Decoder to resolve training difficulties.
Listening to Patients: Detecting and Mitigating Patient Misreport in Medical Dialogue System (2025.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Medical Dialogue Systems (MDSs) aim to provide automated healthcare support through natural language interactions between patients and system agents.
Approach: They propose a framework that detects misreports and mitigates them by generating controlled clarifying questions.
Outcome: The proposed framework can detect misreports and mitigate them through generating controlled clarifying questions.
GEMv2: Multilingual NLG Benchmarking in a Single Line of Code (2022.emnlp-demos)

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Challenge: Evaluations in machine learning rarely use the latest metrics, datasets, or human evaluation in favor of remaining compatible with prior work.
Approach: They propose to use the Generation, Evaluation, and Metrics Benchmark to integrate new evaluation methods into existing evaluations.
Outcome: The proposed evaluation infrastructure bridges the gap between the advantages of leaderboards and in-depth and evolving evaluations by allowing model developers to benefit from each other's work.
Well Begun is Half Done: Generator-agnostic Knowledge Pre-Selection for Knowledge-Grounded Dialogue (2023.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Existing knowledge selection methods are costly to learn and difficult to interpret when errors arise in the generated responses.
Approach: They propose a generator-agnostic knowledge selection method to select context-related knowledge among different knowledge structures and variable knowledge requirements.
Outcome: The proposed method can select knowledge accurately in advance and reduce learning, adjustment, and interpretation burden of later models.
Why Do Emotions Change? Appraisal-Guided Reasoning for Emotion–Cause Triplet Extraction in Conversations (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing methods for multi-turn, multi-speaker multimodal affect understanding are difficult to maintain conversation-level consistency under within-speaks' emotion shifts.
Approach: They propose a framework that combines appraisal-guided structured generation with graph-structured reinforcement learning to extract triplets from multi-turn multimodal conversations.
Outcome: The proposed framework outperforms baselines on public MECTEC benchmarks and improves structure-aware metrics on emotion shift coherence and core events.
Random Smooth-based Certified Defense against Text Adversarial Attack (2024.findings-eacl)

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Challenge: Textual adversarial examples train models on the worst-case text generated by substituting words in original texts with synonyms, but due to the discrete word embedding representations, the large search space hinders the robust training efficiency.
Approach: They propose to treat the word substitution as a continuous perturbation on the word embedding representation and apply random smooth techniques to approximate the word replacement operation.
Outcome: The proposed method outperforms conventional methods and improves the robustness in training.
ARES: Adaptive Red-Teaming and End-to-End Repair of Policy-Reward System (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing red-teaming approaches focus on policy-level weaknesses, but they overlook systemic weaknesses . aRES exploits dual-targeting weaknesses in both the core LLM and the RM simultaneously.
Approach: a new framework uncovers weaknesses in both the core and the reward models simultaneously . a "Safety Mentor" generates semantically coherent adversarial prompts .
Outcome: ARES uncovers weaknesses in both the core LLM and the RM simultaneously . it fine-tunes the LM to detect harmful content, then optimizes the core model .
MinT: Boosting Generalization in Mathematical Reasoning via Multi-view Fine-tuning (2024.lrec-main)

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Challenge: Existing methods focus on specializing LMs in mathematical reasoning and rely on knowledge distillation.
Approach: They propose a multi-view fine-tuning method that exploits existing mathematical problem datasets with diverse annotation styles.
Outcome: The proposed method outperforms existing methods that rely heavily on LLM teachers . it grants models generalization ability across views and datasets, and the capability to learn from inaccurate or incomplete data.
Bridging the Gap between Training and Inference: Multi-Candidate Optimization for Diverse Neural Machine Translation (2022.findings-naacl)

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Challenge: Existing diverse NMT models lack translation diversity due to a discrepancy between training and inference . despite the success of diverse NTM, there is still a lack of translation diversity .
Approach: They propose a multi-candidate optimization framework for diverse NMT to deal with this defect.
Outcome: The proposed framework is transparent to basic diverse NMT models, and universally makes better trade-off between diversity and quality.
VLM2-Bench: A Closer Look at How Well VLMs Implicitly Link Explicit Matching Visual Cues (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing vision-language models lack the ability to visually link matching visual cues across images or frames.
Approach: They propose a benchmark to assess whether vision-language models can Visually Link Matching cues with 9 subtasks and over 3,000 test cases.
Outcome: The proposed benchmarks on multiple images and videos do not demonstrate that vision-language models can link visual cues across images or frames.
SynthAgent: Adapting Web Agents with Synthetic Supervision (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing studies have focused on synthetic supervision but have encountered data quality issues.
Approach: They propose a fully synthetic supervision framework that aims at improving data quality via dual refinement of both tasks and trajectories.
Outcome: The proposed framework outperforms existing methods on standardized benchmarks and shows promising results on a standardized test.
Self-supervised Product Title Rewrite for Product Listing Ads (2022.naacl-industry)

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Challenge: Existing work has investigated the title optimization for Product Listing Ads (PLAs) however, little work has examined the effectiveness of this method.
Approach: They propose a method to rewrite product listing ads titles without considering the fluency and information priority.
Outcome: The proposed solution reduces the cost and improves CTR in the offline test and real-world online test by a large amount.
Towards User-Driven Neural Machine Translation (2021.acl-long)

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Challenge: a good translation should implicitly mirror user traits rather than translate the original content semantically.
Approach: They propose a framework that captures user traits from historical inputs . they propose 'user-driven' NMT to model user behavior under a zero-shot learning fashion .
Outcome: The proposed framework can capture user traits from historical inputs under zero-shot learning fashion.

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