Papers by Mingyu Xu
Instructions as Backdoors: Backdoor Vulnerabilities of Instruction Tuning for Large Language Models (2024.naacl-long)
Copied to clipboard
| Challenge: | et al., 2021) show that instruction models can be trained on crowdsourced datasets with task instructions to achieve superior performance. |
| Approach: | They examine security concerns of emergent instruction tuning paradigm that models are trained on crowdsourced datasets with task instructions to achieve superior performance. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model can achieve 90% success rate across four commonly used datasets. |
LongReD: Mitigating Short-Text Degradation of Long-Context Large Language Models via Restoration Distillation (2025.acl-long)
Copied to clipboard
| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) have extended context windows through scaling positional encodings and lightweight continual pre-training, but performance degradation is still not fully explored. |
| Approach: | They propose a novel approach to reduce short-text performance degradation by minimizing distribution drift in hidden states and attention scores. |
| Outcome: | The proposed approach minimizes the distribution discrepancy between the extended and original models while maintaining or even enhancing the model's long-context abilities. |
CATCH: A Novel Data Synthesis Framework for High Therapy Fidelity and Memory-Driven Planning Chain of Thought in AI Counseling (2025.findings-emnlp)
Copied to clipboard
| Challenge: | Existing studies employ a one-time generation approach to synthesize multi-turn dialogue samples, resulting in low therapy fidelity and failing to capture decision-making rationale behind each response. |
| Approach: | They propose a data synthesis framework that synthesizes multi-turn dialogue samples and incrementally generates stage-aligned counseling dialogues. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework significantly improves therapy fidelity and logical coherence in AI counseling. |
ShortGPT: Layers in Large Language Models are More Redundant Than You Expect (2025.findings-acl)
Copied to clipboard
Xin Men, Mingyu Xu, Qingyu Zhang, Qianhao Yuan, Bingning Wang, Hongyu Lin, Yaojie Lu, Xianpei Han, Weipeng Chen
| Challenge: | Recent studies have identified significant redundancy in large language models . quantization and pruning are two methods that reduce computational resources . |
| Approach: | They propose simple pruning methods that prune redundant layers based on their BI scores. |
| Outcome: | The proposed pruning methods demonstrate superior performance over previous pruning methods. |
SAGE: An Agentic Explainer Framework for Interpreting SAE Features in Language Models (2026.eacl-industry)
Copied to clipboard
| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable progress, yet their internal mechanisms remain largely opaque. |
| Approach: | They propose an agent-based framework that recasts feature interpretation from a passive, single-pass generation task into an explanation-driven process. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework produces explanations with significantly higher generative and predictive accuracy compared to state-of-the-art baselines. |
Instructional Fingerprinting of Large Language Models (2024.naacl-long)
Copied to clipboard
| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) require considerable cost to train from scratch . fingerprinting is essential to protect intellectual property and to ensure downstream users and developers adhere to their license terms. |
| Approach: | They propose a method for fingerprinting Large language models that implants a private key into the model to generate specific text when the key is present. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method prevents publisher overclaim and maintains robustness against fingerprint guessing and parameter-efficient training. |
PodBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Instruction-Aware Audio-Oriented Podcast Script Generation (2026.acl-long)
Copied to clipboard
| Challenge: | Podcast script generation is a challenging task for large language models, but evaluation resources are limited. |
| Approach: | They propose a benchmark to evaluate podcast script generation using a multifaceted evaluation framework . PodBench is a prototype that integrates quantitative constraints with LLM-based quality assessment . |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework integrates quantitative constraints with LLM-based quality assessment. |
Guess What I am Thinking: A Benchmark for Inner Thought Reasoning of Role-Playing Language Agents (2025.findings-emnlp)
Copied to clipboard
| Challenge: | Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs)-based Role-Playing Language Agents (RPLAs) have attracted broad attention in various applications. |
| Approach: | They propose a benchmark for evaluating character thought generation using literature . they propose 'MIRROR' which generates character thoughts by retrieving memories, predicting character reactions, and synthesizing motivations. |
| Outcome: | The proposed benchmark outperforms existing methods in evaluating character thought generation. |
FactCG: Enhancing Fact Checkers with Graph-Based Multi-Hop Data (2025.naacl-long)
Copied to clipboard
| Challenge: | Prior research on training grounded factuality classification models to detect hallucinations in large language models (LLMs) has relied on public natural language inference (NLI) data and synthetic data. |
| Approach: | They propose a method that leverages multi-hop reasoning on context graphs extracted from documents to generate complex multi-level claims without relying on LLMs to decide data labels. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model outperforms GPT-4-o on the LLM-Aggrefact benchmark with much smaller model size. |
Bridging Kernel Drivers and Virtual Device Models with LLM-Powered Automation (2026.acl-demo)
Copied to clipboard
| Challenge: | Linux kernel device drivers are tightly coupled with hardware, making them difficult to execute and test without physical devices. |
| Approach: | They present a tool that generates QEMU-based virtual devices directly from Linux driver source code. |
| Outcome: | The proposed tool generates QEMU-based virtual devices directly from Linux driver source code. |