Papers by Ruixiang Tang
Disentangling Memory and Reasoning Ability in Large Language Models (2025.acl-long)
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Mingyu Jin, Weidi Luo, Sitao Cheng, Xinyi Wang, Wenyue Hua, Ruixiang Tang, William Yang Wang, Yongfeng Zhang
| Challenge: | Existing LLMs operate as an opaque process without explicit separation between knowledge retrieval and reasoning steps, making the decision-making process unclear and disorganized. |
| Approach: | They propose a language model inference paradigm that decomposes the complex inference process into two distinct and clear actions: (1) memory recall: which retrieves relevant knowledge, and (2) reasoning: which performs reasoning steps based on the recalled knowledge. |
| Outcome: | The proposed paradigm decomposes the inference process into two distinct and clear actions, memory and reason, guiding the model to distinguish between steps that require knowledge retrieval and those that involve reasoning. |
Assessing Privacy Risks in Language Models: A Case Study on Summarization Tasks (2023.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Large language models have revolutionized the field of NLP by achieving state-of-the-art performance on various tasks. |
| Approach: | They investigate the membership inference attack by using model's API to determine if a sample was part of the training data. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model is able to identify if a sample was part of the training data and exploits its similarity and resistance to document modifications as potential MI signals on widely used datasets. |
Navigating the Shortcut Maze: A Comprehensive Analysis of Shortcut Learning in Text Classification by Language Models (2024.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Language models (LMs) often rely on spurious correlations rather than causally relevant features to improve accuracy and generalizability. |
| Approach: | They propose a benchmark that categorizes shortcuts into occurrence, style, and concept . they aim to explore the nuanced ways shortcuts influence the performance of LMs . |
| Outcome: | The proposed benchmark categorizes shortcuts into occurrence, style, and concept . it systematically investigates models’ resilience and susceptibilities to sophisticated shortcuts . |
Taylor Unswift: Secured Weight Release for Large Language Models via Taylor Expansion (2024.emnlp-main)
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Guanchu Wang, Yu-Neng Chuang, Ruixiang Tang, Shaochen Zhong, Jiayi Yuan, Hongye Jin, Zirui Liu, Vipin Chaudhary, Shuai Xu, James Caverlee, Xia Hu
| Challenge: | Existing mechanisms compromise ownership rights or raise data privacy concerns . existing mechanisms compromise security of released large language models . |
| Approach: | They propose a TaylorMLP to preserve the ownership of large language models by transforming the weights of LLMs into Taylor-series parameters instead of releasing original weights . |
| Outcome: | The proposed model preserves ownership of large language models and prevents their abuse by adjusting the generation speed and causing low-speed token generation. |
When Backdoors Speak: Understanding LLM Backdoor Attacks Through Model-Generated Explanations (2025.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Recent studies have shown that Large Language Models (LLMs) are susceptible to backdoor attacks, where triggers embedded in poisoned data can maliciously alter LLMs’ behaviors. |
| Approach: | They propose to leverage LLMs' generative capabilities to generate human-readable explanations for their decisions, enabling direct comparisons between explanations of clean and poisoned data. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model produces coherent explanations for clean inputs but logically flawed explanations on poisoned data. |
Large Language Models Can be Lazy Learners: Analyze Shortcuts in In-Context Learning (2023.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) have shown great potential for in-context learning, but their robustness and performance on downstream tasks remains limited. |
| Approach: | They propose to examine the reliance of LLMs on shortcuts or spurious correlations within prompts for downstream tasks and find larger models are more likely to utilize shortcuts in prompts during inference. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model is “lazy learner” and more likely to use shortcuts in prompts during inference. |
Reasoning over Precedents Alongside Statutes: Case-Augmented Deliberative Alignment for LLM Safety (2026.acl-long)
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Can Jin, Rui Wu, Tong Che, Qixin Zhang, Hongwu Peng, Jiahui Zhao, Zhenting Wang, Wenqi Wei, Ligong Han, Zhao Zhang, Yuan Cao, Ruixiang Tang, Dimitris N. Metaxas
| Challenge: | OpenAI introduces deliberative alignment (DA) to enhance safety of its o-series models, but effectiveness of this approach in open-source LLMs is understudied. |
| Approach: | They propose a case-augmented deliberative alignment method for large language models . they propose to use reinforcement learning on self-generated safety reasoning chains . |
| Outcome: | The proposed method avoids narrowly enumerated rules and allows broader adaptability. |
FaithLM: Towards Faithful Explanations for Large Language Models (2026.eacl-long)
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Yu-Neng Chuang, Guanchu Wang, Chia-Yuan Chang, Ruixiang Tang, Shaochen Zhong, Fan Yang, Andrew Wen, Mengnan Du, Xuanting Cai, Vladimir Braverman, Xia Hu
| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) produce natural language explanations, but they lack faithfulness and do not reflect the evidence the model uses to decide. |
| Approach: | They propose a model-agnostic framework that evaluates and improves the faithfulness of LLM explanations without token masking or task-specific heuristics. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework improves faithfulness of large language models without masking or heuristics. |
TACO: Enhancing Multimodal In-context Learning via Task Mapping-Guided Sequence Configuration (2025.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Multimodal in-context learning (ICL) is a key mechanism for harnessing the capabilities of large vision–language models. |
| Approach: | They propose a transformer-based model with task-aware attention that dynamically configures ICL sequences. |
| Outcome: | Experiments on five LVLMs and nine datasets show that TACO surpasses baselines across diverse ICL tasks. |
TrustAgent: Towards Safe and Trustworthy LLM-based Agents (2024.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Existing LLMs are primarily used for simple text-related tasks, but LLM-based agents can undertake more complex tasks that require planning and interaction with the physical world and humans. |
| Approach: | They propose an Agent-Constitution-based agent framework with a particular focus on improving the LLM-based agents' safety. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework can enhance an LLM agent’s safety across multiple domains by identifying and mitigating potential dangers during the planning process. |
A Decoupled Multi-Agent Framework for Complex Text Style Transfer (2025.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Existing models for text style transfer struggle with complex styles . existing models perform well on simple styles like sentiment and formality . |
| Approach: | They propose a multi-agent self-check framework that includes a large language model as a planner for disentangling subtasks and expert agents for executing the subtask. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework significantly improves style strength and content preservation on simple and complex style datasets. |
LoRATK: LoRA Once, Backdoor Everywhere in the Share-and-Play Ecosystem (2025.findings-emnlp)
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Hongyi Liu, Shaochen Zhong, Xintong Sun, Minghao Tian, Mohsen Hariri, Zirui Liu, Ruixiang Tang, Zhimeng Jiang, Jiayi Yuan, Yu-Neng Chuang, Li Li, Soo-Hyun Choi, Rui Chen, Vipin Chaudhary, Xia Hu
| Challenge: | distributing LLMs without a proven track record like ‘meta-llama‘ or ‘qwen‘ rarely gains community traction. |
| Approach: | They propose a simple, efficient, yet specific recipe for a backdoor LoRA to be injected into task-enhancing LoRAs and examine the mechanisms of such infections. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model allows attackers to scale the distribution of compromised LoRAs with minimal effort by leveraging the rich pool of shared LoRA assets. |
Secure Your Model: An Effective Key Prompt Protection Mechanism for Large Language Models (2024.findings-naacl)
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| Challenge: | Recent years have seen an unprecedented surge in the development and application of large language models (LLMs) however, the development of LLMs is a complex endeavor, requiring substantial investments in terms of financial and computational resources. |
| Approach: | They propose a mechanism wherein a unique key prompt is embedded within the LLM to protect it from unauthorized access and potential theft. |
| Outcome: | The proposed protection can protect the model without significantly impacting its original function. |