Papers by Ting Cao
VPTQ: Extreme Low-bit Vector Post-Training Quantization for Large Language Models (2024.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Recent research has focused on pushing weight-only quantization to extremely low-bit due to numerical representation limitations. |
| Approach: | They propose a vector-based quantization approach that pushes LLMs to extremely low-bit . they propose scalar-based weight quantization that reduces memory requirements and optimizes storage costs . |
| Outcome: | The proposed method reduces model quantization perplexity by 0.01-0.34 on LLaMA-2, 0.38-0.68 on mistral-7B, 4.41-7.34, on llaMA-3 on QA tasks on average. |
Examining Inter-Consistency of Large Language Models Collaboration: An In-depth Analysis via Debate (2023.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Existing studies focus on inconsistency issues within a single LLM, while we explore the inter-consistencies among multiple LLMs for collaboration. |
| Approach: | They propose a formal debate framework to examine whether LLMs can collaborate effectively to achieve a consensus for a shared goal. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework enables LLMs to achieve consensus in three real-world debate scenarios with real-time scenarios aligned to the LLM's goals. |
HyperEdit: Unlocking Instruction-based Text Editing in LLMs via Hypernetworks (2026.findings-acl)
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Yiming Zeng, Jinghan Cao, Zexin Li, Wanhao Yu, Zhankai Ye, Dawei Xiang, Ting Hua, Xin Liu, Shangqian Gao, Tingting Yu
| Challenge: | Existing approaches treat instruction-based text editing as a generic text generation problem. Existing methods either over-edit or fail to apply modifications consistently. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that processes each editing request to best align with it. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves 9% improvement over the state-of-the-art model. |
Toward Secure Tuning: Mitigating Security Risks from Instruction Fine-Tuning (2026.acl-long)
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Yanrui Du, Fenglei Fan, Sendong Zhao, Jiawei Cao, Ming Ma, Danyang Zhao, Shuren Qi, Ting Liu, Bing Qin
| Challenge: | Instruction Fine-Tuning (IFT) has emerged as a critical technique for customizing Large Language Models (LLMs) however, recent studies have revealed that IFT can compromise the built-in security mechanisms of LLMs, posing significant security risks. |
| Approach: | They propose a method that shifts learning burden onto security-robust parameters and propose 'warm-up' phase that preferentially trains Mods_Rob to learn low-level features with minimal security risk. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method reduces security risks without sacrificing performance gains across knowledge-intensive datasets. |
Shadow-Activated Backdoor Attacks on Multimodal Large Language Models (2025.findings-acl)
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Ziyi Yin, Muchao Ye, Yuanpu Cao, Jiaqi Wang, Aofei Chang, Han Liu, Jinghui Chen, Ting Wang, Fenglong Ma
| Challenge: | Existing backdoor attacks on Multimodal Large Language Models are less applicable to open-ended conversations with users. |
| Approach: | They propose a shadow-activated backdoor attack scenario where attackers inject malicious content into the responses of MLLMs when the responses explicitly relate to the shadowed object. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves the desired behaviors by constructing a poisoned dataset and implementing an attention-regularized tuning strategy. |
Semantic Parsing with Syntax- and Table-Aware SQL Generation (P18-1)
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Yibo Sun, Duyu Tang, Nan Duan, Jianshu Ji, Guihong Cao, Xiaocheng Feng, Bing Qin, Ting Liu, Ming Zhou
| Challenge: | Existing approaches generate a SQL query word-by-word but results are incorrect or not executable due to mismatch between question words and table contents. |
| Approach: | They propose a generative model to map natural language questions into SQL queries. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model significantly improves state-of-the-art execution accuracy from 69.0% to 74.4% on a large question- SQL dataset. |
ICDAGENT: Empowering Agentic Large Language Models for Explainable Medical Coding (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Existing models lack convincing, human-understandable explanations, making them difficult for physicians to trust and use in practice. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that aims to automatically assign ICD codes to clinical notes while providing explicit justifications for each assignment. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework achieves effective ICD coding with accurate explanations using two collaborative LLM agents: a coding agent and a critical agent. |
BitDistiller: Unleashing the Potential of Sub-4-Bit LLMs via Self-Distillation (2024.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Weight quantization has emerged as a popular solution to reduce memory and computational demands. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that synergizes Quantization-Aware Training (QAT) with Knowledge Distillation (KD) to boost the performance of LLMs at sub-4-bit. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework outperforms existing QAT methods on language understanding and complex reasoning benchmarks on sub-4-bit models. |
Com2 : A Causal-Guided Benchmark for Exploring Complex Commonsense Reasoning in Large Language Models (2025.acl-long)
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Kai Xiong, Xiao Ding, Yixin Cao, Yuxiong Yan, Li Du, Yufei Zhang, Jinglong Gao, Jiaqian Liu, Bing Qin, Ting Liu
| Challenge: | Existing works focus on complex tasks like math and code, while complex commonsense reasoning remains underexplored due to its uncertainty and lack of structure. |
| Approach: | They propose to build a benchmark for large language models based on complex commonsense reasoning based upon causal event graphs and causal theory. |
| Outcome: | The proposed benchmark combines a complex commonsense reasoning benchmark with a detective story to achieve a more challenging subset. |
AFPQ: Asymmetric Floating Point Quantization for LLMs (2024.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Low-bit weight quantization can save memory and accelerate inference. |
| Approach: | They propose asymmetric FP quantization which sets separate scales for positive and negative values. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method leads to large accuracy improvements and can be easily plugged into other quantization methods, including GPTQ and AWQ, for better performance. |
Bitnet.cpp: Efficient Edge Inference for Ternary LLMs (2025.acl-long)
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Jinheng Wang, Hansong Zhou, Ting Song, Shijie Cao, Yan Xia, Ting Cao, Jianyu Wei, Shuming Ma, Hongyu Wang, Furu Wei
| Challenge: | 1-bit large language models have spurred interest in ternary LLMs, but efficient edge inference is still scarce. |
| Approach: | They propose an inference system optimized for 1-bit large language models . they propose a new library that facilitates sub-2-bits-per-weight inference . |
| Outcome: | The proposed inference system achieves 6.25x speed increase over full-precision baselines and 2.32x over low-bit baselines. |
BIPEFT: Budget-Guided Iterative Search for Parameter Efficient Fine-Tuning of Large Pretrained Language Models (2024.findings-emnlp)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods for parameter-efficient fine-tuning are limited by computational and storage requirements. |
| Approach: | They propose a budget-guided iterative search strategy to disentangle binary module and rank dimension search spaces and early selection strategies based on parameter budgets. |
| Outcome: | The proposed method significantly improves search efficiency on public benchmarks. |