Papers by Yongkang Chen
The Efficiency vs. Accuracy Trade-off: Optimizing RAG-Enhanced LLM Recommender Systems Using Multi-Head Early Exit (2025.acl-long)
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Huixue Zhou, Hengrui Gu, Zaifu Zhan, Xi Liu, Kaixiong Zhou, Yongkang Xiao, Mingfu Liang, Srinivas Prasad Govindan, Piyush Chawla, Jiyan Yang, Xiangfei Meng, Huayu Li, Buyun Zhang, Liang Luo, Wen-Yen Chen, Yiping Han, Bo Long, Rui Zhang, Tianlong Chen
| Challenge: | Existing frameworks for Large Language Models (LLMs) for Click-Through Rate prediction require a careful balance between computational efficiency and predictive accuracy. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that integrates Retrieval-Augmented Generation with a novel multi-head early exit architecture to address both challenges. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework reduces retrieval time while maintaining high model performance. |
Refusal-Aware Red Teaming: Exposing Inconsistency in Safety Evaluations (2025.emnlp-main)
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| Challenge: | Large Language Models (LLMs) require rigorous safety evaluations to be effective. |
| Approach: | They propose a red teaming framework that detects internal model refusals and contrasts them with judgments from an external safety evaluator to generate test cases that expose such discrepancies. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework outperforms existing reinforcement learning-based approaches in generating diverse test cases and achieves a substantially higher discovery rate of refusal gaps. |
Beyond Noise: Characterizing Creative Potential in Unverifiable LLM Hallucinations (2026.acl-long)
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Yu Yan, Chunhong Zhang, Haiyu Zhao, Ziyang Zeng, Zihao Liu, Yongkang Wu, Jianzhou Diao, YiJie Chen, Shujie Wang, Zheng Hu
| Challenge: | Large Language Models generate outputs that extend beyond established knowledge . prior work does not characterize the unverifiable space as a whole . |
| Approach: | They propose a novelty-verifiability characterization that distinguishes Creative Synthesis from Groundless Fabrication by a conceptual creation task. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model distinguishes Creative Synthesis (Region A) from Groundless Fabrication (Regium B) it shows that Region A is non-negligible and robust, persisting across generation strategies, models, domains, and embedding choices. |
MAGI: Multi-Agent Guided Interview for Psychiatric Assessment (2025.findings-acl)
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Guanqun Bi, Zhuang Chen, Zhoufu Liu, Hongkai Wang, Xiyao Xiao, Yuqiang Xie, Wen Zhang, Yongkang Huang, Yuxuan Chen, Libiao Peng, Minlie Huang
| Challenge: | Existing large language models (LLMs) do not align with psychiatric diagnostic protocols. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that transforms the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview into automatic computational workflows through coordinated multi-agent collaboration. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework transforms the gold-standard Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) into automatic computational workflows through coordinated multi-agent collaboration. |
Timely Machine: Awareness of Time Makes Test-Time Scaling Agentic (2026.acl-long)
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| Challenge: | Large language models (LLMs) tackle complex reasoning tasks, but test-time scaling is becoming expensive. |
| Approach: | They propose to redefine test-time as wall-clock time, where models dynamically adjust strategies based on time budgets. |
| Outcome: | The proposed model improves time budget awareness and boosts performance across Timely-Eval. |
Better Red Teaming via Searching with Large Language Model (2025.findings-acl)
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| Challenge: | Existing methods for evaluating large language models face challenges in managing semantic intricacies and optimizing the efficiency of the search process. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that reconceptualizes test case generation as a strategic planning problem, leveraging Monte Carlo Tree Search. |
| Outcome: | Experiments on a range of LLM architectures show that the proposed framework achieves state-of-the-art attack success rates without sacrificing computational efficiency. |
CharacterGLM: Customizing Social Characters with Large Language Models (2024.emnlp-industry)
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Jinfeng Zhou, Zhuang Chen, Dazhen Wan, Bosi Wen, Yi Song, Jifan Yu, Yongkang Huang, Pei Ke, Guanqun Bi, Libiao Peng, JiaMing Yang, Xiyao Xiao, Sahand Sabour, Xiaohan Zhang, Wenjing Hou, Yijia Zhang, Yuxiao Dong, Hongning Wang, Jie Tang, Minlie Huang
| Challenge: | Character-based dialogue systems (CharacterDial) allow users to customize social characters for social interactions. |
| Approach: | They will collect a large-scale Chinese corpus of characters with diverse categories and behaviors and develop CharacterGLM models to address these challenges. |
| Outcome: | Experiments show that CharacterGLM outperforms most popular open- and closed-source LLMs and performs comparable to GPT-4. |
Crisp: Cognitive Restructuring of Negative Thoughts through Multi-turn Supportive Dialogues (2025.emnlp-main)
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Jinfeng Zhou, Yuxuan Chen, Jianing Yin, Yongkang Huang, Yihan Shi, Xikun Zhang, Libiao Peng, Rongsheng Zhang, Tangjie Lv, Zhipeng Hu, Hongning Wang, Minlie Huang
| Challenge: | Existing approaches to cognitive restructuring (CR) are limited by entrenched cognitive distortions, emotional resistance, and individual differences. |
| Approach: | They propose a framework that structures CR as theory-grounded multi-stage multi-turn dialogue and a multi-channel loop mechanism to account for diverse individual distortions. |
| Outcome: | The proposed framework integrates supportive strategies for emotional management and a multi-channel loop mechanism to account for diverse individual distortions. |