Papers by Pengyu Li
Uncertainty Quantification for Clinical Outcome Predictions with (Large) Language Models (2025.findings-naacl)
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| Challenge: | Language models (LMs) have significant potential for clinical prediction tasks . however, unreliable decisions can result in significant costs due to compromised patient safety and ethical concerns . |
| Approach: | They propose to combine ensembling and multi-tasking approaches to reduce uncertainty in EHRs by using multi-tapping methods. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework reduces model uncertainty in white-box and black-box settings, and improves model transparency in both settings. |
UnifiedMLLM: Enabling Unified Representation for Multi-modal Multi-tasks With Large Language Model (2025.findings-naacl)
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Zhaowei Li, Wei Wang, YiQing Cai, Qi Xu, Pengyu Wang, Dong Zhang, Hang Song, Botian Jiang, Zhida Huang, Tao Wang
| Challenge: | Representative models like LLaVA and MiniGPT-4 have great capabilities in various tasks. |
| Approach: | They propose a unified model to represent various multi-modal tasks using a single representation. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model outperforms existing models in a variety of tasks while maintaining generality and scalability. |
Atoxia: Red-teaming Large Language Models with Target Toxic Answers (2025.findings-naacl)
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| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) are still vulnerable to generation safety vulnerabilities. |
| Approach: | They propose a method that A**tacks LLMs with target "toxi" given a particular harmful answer, the method generates a user query and a misleading answer opening to examine the internal defects of a given LLM. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method detects safety risks in open-source models and state-of-the-art models such as GPT-4o. |
Learning to Update Natural Language Comments Based on Code Changes (2020.acl-main)
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| Challenge: | a novel approach to update comments based on code changes is proposed . a dataset of open-source software projects is used to train and evaluate the model . |
| Approach: | They propose an approach that learns to correlate changes across two distinct language representations to generate a sequence of edits that are applied to the existing comment to reflect the source code modifications. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model outperforms baselines and automatic metrics with respect to making edits. |
SeqXGPT: Sentence-Level AI-Generated Text Detection (2023.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods for sentence-level AIGT detection are weak . large language models (LLMs) can generate human-like content . |
| Approach: | They propose a sentence-level AIGT detection challenge using LLMs as log probability lists . they propose 'check' GPT' method that uses log probability list features to detect AIGT . |
| Outcome: | The proposed method surpasses baseline methods in sentence- and document-level detection challenges. |
Sparsity-Accelerated Training for Large Language Models (2024.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated proficiency across various NLP tasks but often require additional training, such as continual pre-training and supervised fine-tuning. |
| Approach: | They propose to leverage sparsity in pre-trained LLMs to accelerate training by disregarding computations for unimportant neurons. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves comparable or superior performance to standard training while significantly accelerating the process. |
Watermarking LLMs with Weight Quantization (2023.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Large language models are being deployed at an astonishing speed, exposing users to high risks. |
| Approach: | They propose a method that plants watermarks in quantization process of large language models without pre-defined triggers during inference. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method protects model weights without pre-defined triggers . it works when the model is used in the fp32 mode and remains hidden when the models are quantized to int8 . |
Adversarial Preference Optimization: Enhancing Your Alignment via RM-LLM Game (2024.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods for training large language models require additional annotations to adjust to shifted distributions. |
| Approach: | They propose an algorithm that allows LLMs and reward models to update alternatively via a min-max game to improve their alignment. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework improves existing alignment baselines in terms of LLM helpfulness and harmlessness. |
InferAligner: Inference-Time Alignment for Harmlessness through Cross-Model Guidance (2024.emnlp-main)
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Pengyu Wang, Dong Zhang, Linyang Li, Chenkun Tan, Xinghao Wang, Mozhi Zhang, Ke Ren, Botian Jiang, Xipeng Qiu
| Challenge: | Existing methods for enhancing harmlessness and helpfulness of large language models (LLMs) involve complex and resource-intensive training processes. |
| Approach: | They propose a method that decouples harmlessness from helpfulness during inference phase. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method significantly reduces the attack success rate (ASR) of harmful instructions and jailbreak instructions while maintaining almost unchanged performance in downstream tasks. |
MARCH: Multi-Agent Reinforced Check for Hallucination (2026.acl-long)
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Zhuo Li, Yupeng Zhang, Pengyu Cheng, Jiajun Song, Mengyu Zhou, Hao Li, Shujie Hu, Yu Qin, null Erchao.zec, Xiaoxi Jiang, null Guanjunjiang
| Challenge: | Existing methods to detect hallucinations suffer from inherent confirmation bias, where the verifier inadvertently reproduces the errors of the original generation. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that enforces rigorous factual alignment by leveraging deliberate *information asymmetry* by combining a pipeline of three specialized agents: a Solver, a Proposer, and a Checker. |
| Outcome: | Extensive experiments across hallucination benchmarks demonstrate that MARCH substantially reduces hallucinism rates. |
CARD: Cross-modal Agent Framework for Generative and Editable Residential Design (2025.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Architectural design automation has made significant progress, but the complexity of open-world environments makes residential design a challenging task. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that leverages a system of specialized cross-modal agents to adapt to open-world residential design. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework enables users to generate and edit residential design without requiring specialized expertise. |
Advancing Fine-Grained Visual Understanding with Multi-Scale Alignment in Multi-Modal Models (2025.emnlp-main)
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Wei Wang, Zhaowei Li, Qi Xu, Linfeng Li, YiQing Cai, Botian Jiang, Hang Song, Xingcan Hu, Pengyu Wang, Li Xiao
| Challenge: | Recent advances in multi-modal large language models have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in multimodal understanding, reasoning, and interaction. |
| Approach: | They propose a method that effectively aligns and integrates multi-scale knowledge of objects . they use a pipeline that provides over 300K essential training data to enhance alignment . |
| Outcome: | The proposed method effectively aligns and integrates multi-scale knowledge of objects, including texts, coordinates, and images. |
PhysPRM: A Generative Process Reward Model with Fine-grained Diagnosis for Physics Problem Solving (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing Large Language Models (LLMs) struggle with physics problem solving due to difficulties in decoding implicit constraints and maintaining physical consistency. |
| Approach: | They propose a Generative PRM that treats evaluation as a generative task . it produces fine-grained diagnoses comprising critiques, final judgments, and specific error types . |
| Outcome: | The proposed model improves performance across seven benchmarks in Best-of-N and critique refinement strategies. |
Decoupled Proxy Alignment: Mitigating Language Prior Conflict for Multimodal Alignment in MLLMs (2025.findings-emnlp)
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Chenkun Tan, Pengyu Wang, Shaojun Zhou, Botian Jiang, Zhaowei Li, Dong Zhang, Xinghao Wang, Yaqian Zhou, Xipeng Qiu
| Challenge: | Recent advances in multimodal large language models focus on improving performance . however, language prior conflict leads to suboptimal vision-language alignment . |
| Approach: | They propose a method to decouple the alignment process from language prior interference . they use a proxy LLM to detach from language interference during pretraining . |
| Outcome: | The proposed method improves training performance and generalizes training data. |
AGTAO: Robust and Stabilized LLM Unlearning via Adversarial Gating Training with Adaptive Orthogonality (2026.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Large Language Models (LLMs) unintentionally memorize sensitive data, posing privacy and security risks. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that reconciles unlearning efficacy and utility preservation by using a latent-space gating mechanism to simulate internal recovery attempts. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves superior trade-off between unlearning efficacy and model utility. |
Adversarial Preference Learning for Robust LLM Alignment (2025.findings-acl)
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Yuanfu Wang, Pengyu Wang, Chenyang Xi, Bo Tang, Junyi Zhu, Wenqiang Wei, Chen Chen, Chao Yang, Jingfeng Zhang, Chaochao Lu, Yijun Niu, Keming Mao, Zhiyu Li, Feiyu Xiong, Jie Hu, Mingchuan Yang
| Challenge: | Modern language models rely on Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) to encourage safe behaviors, but they remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks due to three key limitations: (1) the inefficiency and high cost of human annotation; (2) the vast diversity of potential adversarials; and (3) the risk of feedback bias and reward hacking. |
| Approach: | They propose an iterative adversarial training method that incorporates three key innovations to address these challenges. |
| Outcome: | Experiments on Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3 show that the proposed method significantly enhances robustness and reduces harmful outputs from 5.88% to 0.43%. |
LoPT: Lossless Parallel Tokenization Acceleration for Long Context Inference of Large Language Model (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Existing parallel tokenization methods suffer from inconsistent results due to boundary artifacts that occur after merging. |
| Approach: | They propose a Lossless Parallel Tokenization framework that ensures output identical to standard sequential tokenization. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method achieves significant speedup while guaranteeing lossless tokenization. |
SpeechGPT: Empowering Large Language Models with Intrinsic Cross-Modal Conversational Abilities (2023.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Existing multi-modal large language models typically adopt the cascade paradigm, preventing inter-modal knowledge transfer. |
| Approach: | They propose a large language model with intrinsic cross-modal conversational abilities . they construct a cross-text speech instruction dataset and employ a three-stage training strategy . |
| Outcome: | The proposed model can follow cross-modal human instructions and handle multiple modalities with one model. |
NeuralClassifier: An Open-source Neural Hierarchical Multi-label Text Classification Toolkit (P19-3)
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| Challenge: | NeuralClassifier is a toolkit for hierarchical multi-label text classification. |
| Approach: | They propose a toolkit for neural hierarchical multi-label text classification . they use a variety of text encoders to implement the model . |
| Outcome: | The proposed model achieves comparable performance with reported results in the literature. |
HER: Human-like Reasoning and Reinforcement Learning for LLM Role-playing (2026.findings-acl)
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Chengyu Du, Xintao Wang, Aili Chen, Weiyuan Li, Rui Xu, Junteng Liu, Zishan Huang, Rong Tian, Zijun Sun, Yuhao Li, Liheng Feng, Deming Ding, Pengyu Zhao, Yanghua Xiao
| Challenge: | Existing models for LLM role-playing lack high-quality datasets with explicit reasoning traces and reliable reward signals aligned with human preferences. |
| Approach: | They propose a unified framework for cognitive-level persona simulation that strictly distinguishes characters’ first-person thinking processes from LLMs’ third-person reasoning. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework outperforms the Qwen3-32B baseline model and achieves a 30.26% and 14.97% performance on the minimax benchmarks. |
TokDrift: When LLM Speaks in Subwords but Code Speaks in Grammar (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) for code rely on subword tokenizers learned from mixed natural language text and programming language code but driven by statistics rather than grammar. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that applies semantic-preserving rewrite rules to create code variants differing only in tokenization. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework can create code variants differing only in tokenization . the findings highlight the need for grammar-aware tokenization for future code LLMs. |
PerturbScore: Connecting Discrete and Continuous Perturbations in NLP (2023.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Natural language processing (NLP) applications are growing rapidly due to discrete nature of texts. |
| Approach: | They propose to connect discrete perturbations with continuous perturbations to help understand discrete ones in NLP models. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method surpasses methods used in discrete perturbation measuring and can be generalized to different datasets, perturbation methods. |
Impact of Evaluation Methodologies on Code Summarization (2022.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Existing evaluation methodologies for code summarization tasks do not consider timestamps of code and comments. |
| Approach: | They propose a time-segmented evaluation methodology for code summarization that considers timestamps of code and comments during evaluation. |
| Outcome: | The proposed evaluation methodology compares with other evaluation methodologies that have been widely used. |
Improving Disentangled Text Representation Learning with Information-Theoretic Guidance (2020.acl-main)
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Pengyu Cheng, Martin Renqiang Min, Dinghan Shen, Christopher Malon, Yizhe Zhang, Yitong Li, Lawrence Carin
| Challenge: | Disentangled representation learning (DRL) maps different aspects of data into distinct and independent low-dimensional latent vector spaces. |
| Approach: | They propose a method that manifests disentangled representations of text without supervision on semantics by minimizing the upper bound between style and content. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method improves on conditional text generation and text-style transfer tasks and improves style preservation. |
NewsBench: A Systematic Evaluation Framework for Assessing Editorial Capabilities of Large Language Models in Chinese Journalism (2024.acl-long)
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Miao Li, Ming-Bin Chen, Bo Tang, ShengbinHou ShengbinHou, Pengyu Wang, Haiying Deng, Zhiyu Li, Feiyu Xiong, Keming Mao, Cheng Peng, Yi Luo
| Challenge: | a novel evaluation framework assesses the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) for editorial capabilities in Chinese journalism. |
| Approach: | They propose to use a benchmark dataset to assess the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) for editorial capabilities in Chinese journalism. |
| Outcome: | The proposed evaluation framework is based on a dataset of 1,267 test samples in 24 news domains. |
UnifiedVisual: A Framework for Constructing Unified Vision-Language Datasets (2025.emnlp-main)
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Pengyu Wang, Shaojun Zhou, Chenkun Tan, Xinghao Wang, Wei Huang, Zhen Ye, Zhaowei Li, Botian Jiang, Dong Zhang, Xipeng Qiu
| Challenge: | Existing datasets address understanding and generation in isolation, limiting the performance of unified vision large language models. |
| Approach: | They propose a dataset that facilitates mutual enhancement between multimodal understanding and generation. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework integrates diverse visual and textual inputs and outputs, enabling comprehensive cross-modal reasoning and precise text-to-image alignment. |
Case2Code: Scalable Synthetic Data for Code Generation (2025.coling-main)
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Yunfan Shao, Linyang Li, Yichuan Ma, Peiji Li, Demin Song, Qinyuan Cheng, Shimin Li, Xiaonan Li, Pengyu Wang, Qipeng Guo, Hang Yan, Xipeng Qiu, Xuanjing Huang, Dahua Lin
| Challenge: | Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown outstanding breakthroughs in code generation. |
| Approach: | They propose a case-to-code induction task that exploits the expressiveness and correctness of programs by incorporating LLMs into their training. |
| Outcome: | The proposed task improves distribution case-to-code induction and various coding generation tasks. |