Multiple Sequence Alignments (MSAs) provide protein language models with explicit evolutionary context, but their large depth makes subsampling unavoidable under limited token budgets. Existing strategies, including random selection, identity-based filtering, and diversity-driven sampling, are effective heuristics, yet provide limited control over the evolutionary signals retained in the subset. In this work, we recast MSA subsampling as an explicit optimization problem, where key evolutionary measures, including query identity and diversity, are treated as controllable objectives. Building on this view, we introduce AP-REASONER, an Affinity-Propagation-based factor-graph approach. With evolution-aware unary factors, exemplar-consistency factors, and two control knobs, AP-REASONER performs factor-graph reasoning through message passing to infer a fixed-budget MSA subset. Experiments on long-range contact prediction and conformational ensemble prediction show that AP-REASONER outperforms baseline subsamplers on structure-sensitive downstream tasks and enables controllable recovery of alternative protein conformations. These results highlight the value of modeling MSA subsampling as a controllable optimization problem, where factor-graph reasoning offers an effective alternative to heuristic selection.
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Multiple Sequence Alignments (MSAs) provide protein language models with explicit evolutionary context, but their large depth makes subsampling unavoidable under limited token budgets. Existing strategies, including random selection, identity-based filtering, and diversity-driven sampling, are effective heuristics, yet provide limited control over the evolutionary signals retained in the subset. In this work, we recast MSA subsampling as an explicit optimization problem, where key evolutionary measures, including query identity and diversity, are treated as controllable objectives. Building on this view, we introduce AP-REASONER, an Affinity-Propagation-based factor-graph approach. With evolution-aware unary factors, exemplar-consistency factors, and two control knobs, AP-REASONER performs factor-graph reasoning through message passing to infer a fixed-budget MSA subset. Experiments on long-range contact prediction and conformational ensemble prediction show that AP-REASONER outperforms baseline subsamplers on structure-sensitive downstream tasks and enables controllable recovery of alternative protein conformations. These results highlight the value of modeling MSA subsampling as a controllable optimization problem, where factor-graph reasoning offers an effective alternative to heuristic selection.
作者Pengzhao Lyu, Yeun Joon Kim, Hanlin Xiao, Yingyue Luna Luan
Despite the growing use of large language models (LLMs) as creativity evaluators, evidence of their alignment with human evaluations remains mixed, raising the question of when and why their judgments converge with or diverge from human judgments. Across three studies and six widely used LLMs, we addressed this gap by identifying the standards underlying LLM creativity evaluation and examining their downstream implications. Study 1 showed that LLMs generally relied on a narrower subset of human creativity evaluation standards. Convergence with human standards was strongest in the novelty dimension, whereas divergence was clearest in the contextual dimension, which captures social, market, and reputational information. Moreover, each LLM exhibited distinct, model-specific standards that varied substantially in breadth. These differences in evaluation standards were reflected in actual creativity judgments. Study 2 (N = 1,103 ideas) showed that LLM evaluations were moderately correlated with human evaluations, and individual LLMs with broader standards better distinguished ideas humans judged as more versus less creative. Study 3 (N = 1,195) showed that LLMs were less sensitive to contextual information: such information significantly altered human creativity ratings but left LLM ratings largely unchanged. Together, our findings help explain the mixed evidence on LLM-human alignment, showing that alignment depends on the evidence a judgment demands and the standards each model applies. LLMs may resemble humans when evaluations emphasize intrinsic qualities such as novelty, yet diverge when judgments require contextual information. Selecting an LLM evaluator is therefore a consequential decision: different models, applying different standards, recognize different ideas as creative.
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Despite the growing use of large language models (LLMs) as creativity evaluators, evidence of their alignment with human evaluations remains mixed, raising the question of when and why their judgments converge with or diverge from human judgments. Across three studies and six widely used LLMs, we addressed this gap by identifying the standards underlying LLM creativity evaluation and examining their downstream implications. Study 1 showed that LLMs generally relied on a narrower subset of human creativity evaluation standards. Convergence with human standards was strongest in the novelty dimension, whereas divergence was clearest in the contextual dimension, which captures social, market, and reputational information. Moreover, each LLM exhibited distinct, model-specific standards that varied substantially in breadth. These differences in evaluation standards were reflected in actual creativity judgments. Study 2 (N = 1,103 ideas) showed that LLM evaluations were moderately correlated with human evaluations, and individual LLMs with broader standards better distinguished ideas humans judged as more versus less creative. Study 3 (N = 1,195) showed that LLMs were less sensitive to contextual information: such information significantly altered human creativity ratings but left LLM ratings largely unchanged. Together, our findings help explain the mixed evidence on LLM-human alignment, showing that alignment depends on the evidence a judgment demands and the standards each model applies. LLMs may resemble humans when evaluations emphasize intrinsic qualities such as novelty, yet diverge when judgments require contextual information. Selecting an LLM evaluator is therefore a consequential decision: different models, applying different standards, recognize different ideas as creative.
作者Tran Gia Bao, Mo El-Haj, Sameha Al-Shakhsi, Antonio Garcia-Cabot, Raian Ali, Ala Yankouskaya
There is a growing need for reliable and culturally validated instruments to assess psychological dependency on large language models (LLMs), particularly as LLMs are increasingly used for task execution, decision-making, and communication in organizational and work-related settings. This need is especially relevant for Spanish-speaking populations, where LLM adoption is rapidly expanding, yet validated psychometric tools remain scarce. The present study reports the first validation of the Spanish version of the Large Language Model Dependency Scale (LLM-D12-SP), extending prior validations conducted in English- and Arabic-speaking samples. The LLM-D12 is a two-dimensional instrument assessing Instrumental Dependency (reliance on LLMs for performing tasks and supporting decisions) and Relationship Dependency (psychological reliance on LLMs for companionship and social interaction). A total of 386 Spanish-speaking participants (M = 28.0 years, SD = 6.1; 55% male) completed the LLM-D12-SP. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original two-factor structure. The scale demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.89 total; 0.86 Instrumental; 0.85 Relationship). Discriminant validity analyses indicated that the two subscales represent related but distinct constructs. External validation showed that both dependency dimensions were positively associated with internet addiction and perceived trustworthiness of LLMs, while showing weak or no association with need for cognition. Together with prior English and Arabic validations, these findings establish cross-linguistic support for the scale's structure and provide a psychometrically sound tool for investigating psychological aspects of LLM use in organizational contexts.
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There is a growing need for reliable and culturally validated instruments to assess psychological dependency on large language models (LLMs), particularly as LLMs are increasingly used for task execution, decision-making, and communication in organizational and work-related settings. This need is especially relevant for Spanish-speaking populations, where LLM adoption is rapidly expanding, yet validated psychometric tools remain scarce. The present study reports the first validation of the Spanish version of the Large Language Model Dependency Scale (LLM-D12-SP), extending prior validations conducted in English- and Arabic-speaking samples. The LLM-D12 is a two-dimensional instrument assessing Instrumental Dependency (reliance on LLMs for performing tasks and supporting decisions) and Relationship Dependency (psychological reliance on LLMs for companionship and social interaction). A total of 386 Spanish-speaking participants (M = 28.0 years, SD = 6.1; 55% male) completed the LLM-D12-SP. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original two-factor structure. The scale demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.89 total; 0.86 Instrumental; 0.85 Relationship). Discriminant validity analyses indicated that the two subscales represent related but distinct constructs. External validation showed that both dependency dimensions were positively associated with internet addiction and perceived trustworthiness of LLMs, while showing weak or no association with need for cognition. Together with prior English and Arabic validations, these findings establish cross-linguistic support for the scale's structure and provide a psychometrically sound tool for investigating psychological aspects of LLM use in organizational contexts.
作者Yunyao Zhang, Xinglang Zhang, Zeliang Chen, Junqing Yu, Zikai Song
Large language models (LLMs) have become powerful tools for language understanding and logical reasoning. However, they still make mistakes when a problem requires both understanding meaning and following logic. A key reason is that natural-language statements often carry implicit semantic relations before any formal reasoning begins. If these hidden meanings are not properly organized, the model may reach incorrect conclusions even when the subsequent reasoning process appears logically valid. Existing methods improve reasoning through decomposition, symbolic translation, external solvers, or self-verification, but pay comparatively less attention to the semantic structure on which reasoning depends. In this paper, we further investigate how semantic organization influences logical reasoning in LLMs. To this end, we propose HexLogicAgent, a framework that first organizes the meaning of natural-language statements and then guides logical reasoning through structured verification. In our investigation, we also make two observations. First, incomplete semantic representations, rather than deductive inference itself, are a major source of logical reasoning failures in LLMs. Second, explicitly modeling the complete structure of semantic opposition substantially delays the degradation of reasoning performance as logical complexity increases. Experiments on challenging logical reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that HexLogicAgent consistently improves reasoning reliability across multiple LLMs. The core idea is supported by a logical hexagon theory, which explains why a complete structure of opposing meanings is necessary for reliable reasoning.
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Large language models (LLMs) have become powerful tools for language understanding and logical reasoning. However, they still make mistakes when a problem requires both understanding meaning and following logic. A key reason is that natural-language statements often carry implicit semantic relations before any formal reasoning begins. If these hidden meanings are not properly organized, the model may reach incorrect conclusions even when the subsequent reasoning process appears logically valid. Existing methods improve reasoning through decomposition, symbolic translation, external solvers, or self-verification, but pay comparatively less attention to the semantic structure on which reasoning depends. In this paper, we further investigate how semantic organization influences logical reasoning in LLMs. To this end, we propose HexLogicAgent, a framework that first organizes the meaning of natural-language statements and then guides logical reasoning through structured verification. In our investigation, we also make two observations. First, incomplete semantic representations, rather than deductive inference itself, are a major source of logical reasoning failures in LLMs. Second, explicitly modeling the complete structure of semantic opposition substantially delays the degradation of reasoning performance as logical complexity increases. Experiments on challenging logical reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that HexLogicAgent consistently improves reasoning reliability across multiple LLMs. The core idea is supported by a logical hexagon theory, which explains why a complete structure of opposing meanings is necessary for reliable reasoning.
Large language model (LLM) evaluation spans diverse tasks and benchmarks, yet evidence remains organized around tasks rather than the capabilities they probe. This fragmentation limits cross-study comparison, obscures capabilities tasks recruit, and makes coverage gaps difficult to identify. We introduce a multi-layer taxonomy of 14 capability domains and 91 subskills across Primitive, Constructed, and Integrative layers. Human cognitive science guides capability definition and organization, not LLM architecture. Layer assignments draw on developmental precedence and hypothesized functional support, while human-origin constructs are adapted to observable model behavior. To demonstrate operational utility, we screened 31,505 papers from ACL, AAAI, ICML, and NeurIPS between 2023 and 2025 and mapped 15,934 LLM-focused papers through multi-model annotation, consensus, and arbitration. Direct research attention concentrated on Language-Semantic Competence (3,551; 22.3%), Reasoning (3,388; 21.3%), Planning and Decision-Making (2,149; 13.5%), and Perception (1,954; 12.3%), whereas six domains appeared in fewer than 2% of papers. Within domains, the most frequent subskill had a median prevalence of 97.9% and appeared in at least 90% of papers in 10 of 14 domains. Language-Semantic Competence and Reasoning formed the highest-volume pair (n = 1,864; 11.7%; lift = 2.47), whereas Theory of Mind and Social Reasoning and Interaction showed the highest lift among pairs with at least 20 co-occurrences (n = 62; lift = 30.84). By shifting the unit of analysis from isolated tasks to structured capabilities, the taxonomy supports research organization, coverage audits, evaluation interpretation, and testable hypotheses for diagnosis, training, and transfer.
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Large language model (LLM) evaluation spans diverse tasks and benchmarks, yet evidence remains organized around tasks rather than the capabilities they probe. This fragmentation limits cross-study comparison, obscures capabilities tasks recruit, and makes coverage gaps difficult to identify. We introduce a multi-layer taxonomy of 14 capability domains and 91 subskills across Primitive, Constructed, and Integrative layers. Human cognitive science guides capability definition and organization, not LLM architecture. Layer assignments draw on developmental precedence and hypothesized functional support, while human-origin constructs are adapted to observable model behavior. To demonstrate operational utility, we screened 31,505 papers from ACL, AAAI, ICML, and NeurIPS between 2023 and 2025 and mapped 15,934 LLM-focused papers through multi-model annotation, consensus, and arbitration. Direct research attention concentrated on Language-Semantic Competence (3,551; 22.3%), Reasoning (3,388; 21.3%), Planning and Decision-Making (2,149; 13.5%), and Perception (1,954; 12.3%), whereas six domains appeared in fewer than 2% of papers. Within domains, the most frequent subskill had a median prevalence of 97.9% and appeared in at least 90% of papers in 10 of 14 domains. Language-Semantic Competence and Reasoning formed the highest-volume pair (n = 1,864; 11.7%; lift = 2.47), whereas Theory of Mind and Social Reasoning and Interaction showed the highest lift among pairs with at least 20 co-occurrences (n = 62; lift = 30.84). By shifting the unit of analysis from isolated tasks to structured capabilities, the taxonomy supports research organization, coverage audits, evaluation interpretation, and testable hypotheses for diagnosis, training, and transfer.
Resolving Design Rule Violations (DRVs) in layouts entails an iterative loop of geometric edits and verification. We present DRC-Aid, a closed-loop agentic framework that automates local DRC repair by formulating it as verification-in-the-loop search. To constrain the combinatorial geometric repair space, a deterministic Rule Engine converts physical verification tool-reported violations into a bounded menu of geometric edits. An off-the-shelf Large Language Model (LLM) evaluates local geometric context to select edits from this menu, with budgeted depth-first search and backtracking. Immediate feedback from verification tools such as Calibre nmDRC/nmLVS enforces geometric compliance and guards against electrical-topology degradation, while a global Memory Bank prevents cyclic re-exploration. Evaluated on FreePDK45 layouts containing DRVs, DRC-Aid achieves DRC-clean, LVS-equivalent repairs in ~92.5% of cases with a ~98% total violation reduction, while residual cases yield partially repaired LVS-equivalent candidates. Under an identical search and verification infrastructure, LLM-based selection outperforms random (54.4%) and deterministic-heuristic (83.3%) policies, with the gap widening on cases with six or more violations.
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Resolving Design Rule Violations (DRVs) in layouts entails an iterative loop of geometric edits and verification. We present DRC-Aid, a closed-loop agentic framework that automates local DRC repair by formulating it as verification-in-the-loop search. To constrain the combinatorial geometric repair space, a deterministic Rule Engine converts physical verification tool-reported violations into a bounded menu of geometric edits. An off-the-shelf Large Language Model (LLM) evaluates local geometric context to select edits from this menu, with budgeted depth-first search and backtracking. Immediate feedback from verification tools such as Calibre nmDRC/nmLVS enforces geometric compliance and guards against electrical-topology degradation, while a global Memory Bank prevents cyclic re-exploration. Evaluated on FreePDK45 layouts containing DRVs, DRC-Aid achieves DRC-clean, LVS-equivalent repairs in ~92.5% of cases with a ~98% total violation reduction, while residual cases yield partially repaired LVS-equivalent candidates. Under an identical search and verification infrastructure, LLM-based selection outperforms random (54.4%) and deterministic-heuristic (83.3%) policies, with the gap widening on cases with six or more violations.
We introduce Graded Large Language Models (GLLMs), an algebraic framework that equips the representation space of a transformer with a grading and propagates the induced weighted scalar action through embeddings, self-attention, and the training objective. The construction extends the theory of graded neural networks and graded transformers to autoregressive language models while preserving expressive power, asymptotic computational complexity, and inference cost. The governing geometric picture is that of geometric invariant theory. The benefit of a grading is expressed by a Kempf--Ness functional on the grading torus; the grades that improve upon the uniform architecture form an open convex cone whose membership is decided by a Hilbert--Mumford-type criterion pairing a grade direction against two measurable profiles of the target and the data; the optimal grades are the coincidence point of two moment maps, given in closed form; and the ordinary transformer appears as a semistable isotropic point on the boundary of the cone: one member of a larger graded family rather than a distinguished optimum. Separately, for level-stratified targets we prove a minimax separation between the graded prior and its absence: over all estimators the risks of the graded and uniform target classes separate throughout an explicit window of sample sizes, by a factor that decays exponentially in the number of levels under geometric stratification. Both profiles are estimable offline, so the optimal grades solve a convex program certified before training begins. Because the grading is absorbed into the learned parameters after training, every GLLM compiles to a standard transformer of identical architecture and inference complexity.
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We introduce Graded Large Language Models (GLLMs), an algebraic framework that equips the representation space of a transformer with a grading and propagates the induced weighted scalar action through embeddings, self-attention, and the training objective. The construction extends the theory of graded neural networks and graded transformers to autoregressive language models while preserving expressive power, asymptotic computational complexity, and inference cost. The governing geometric picture is that of geometric invariant theory. The benefit of a grading is expressed by a Kempf--Ness functional on the grading torus; the grades that improve upon the uniform architecture form an open convex cone whose membership is decided by a Hilbert--Mumford-type criterion pairing a grade direction against two measurable profiles of the target and the data; the optimal grades are the coincidence point of two moment maps, given in closed form; and the ordinary transformer appears as a semistable isotropic point on the boundary of the cone: one member of a larger graded family rather than a distinguished optimum. Separately, for level-stratified targets we prove a minimax separation between the graded prior and its absence: over all estimators the risks of the graded and uniform target classes separate throughout an explicit window of sample sizes, by a factor that decays exponentially in the number of levels under geometric stratification. Both profiles are estimable offline, so the optimal grades solve a convex program certified before training begins. Because the grading is absorbed into the learned parameters after training, every GLLM compiles to a standard transformer of identical architecture and inference complexity.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used in database-backed applications to classify tuples, filter records using semantic predicates, extract structured attributes, and enrich query results. Yet the prompt that start these computations are typically stored outside the DBMS in unstructured formats, making them invisible to query execution, metadata management, and optimization. Drawing on Stonebraker's QUEL as a Data Type and the principles of reflective programming, this paper introduces PromptDB, a database system that treats prompts as tuple-level database values. PromptDB provides a logical PROMPT datatype whose values store a template, bindings to tuple attributes, model metadata, and task metadata. Relations may contain PROMPT attributes directly in base tables, or expose them through views over joined tuples. Users query prompt-valued attributes through generated evaluation views, while the system internally renders, rewrites, optimizes, and executes prompts through an EVAL operator. Making prompts database-visible creates a new optimization space. The key idea is to bring query-optimizer thinking to prompts: just as query optimizers exploit database metadata to rewrite SQL plans, PromptDB exploits database metadata to rewrite prompts. We evaluate PromptDB on synthetic and real-world data workloads across different tasks. The results show how database-guided rewriting improves output validity and yields favorable cost-quality trade-offs compared with static, manually written prompts.
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Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used in database-backed applications to classify tuples, filter records using semantic predicates, extract structured attributes, and enrich query results. Yet the prompt that start these computations are typically stored outside the DBMS in unstructured formats, making them invisible to query execution, metadata management, and optimization. Drawing on Stonebraker's QUEL as a Data Type and the principles of reflective programming, this paper introduces PromptDB, a database system that treats prompts as tuple-level database values. PromptDB provides a logical PROMPT datatype whose values store a template, bindings to tuple attributes, model metadata, and task metadata. Relations may contain PROMPT attributes directly in base tables, or expose them through views over joined tuples. Users query prompt-valued attributes through generated evaluation views, while the system internally renders, rewrites, optimizes, and executes prompts through an EVAL operator. Making prompts database-visible creates a new optimization space. The key idea is to bring query-optimizer thinking to prompts: just as query optimizers exploit database metadata to rewrite SQL plans, PromptDB exploits database metadata to rewrite prompts. We evaluate PromptDB on synthetic and real-world data workloads across different tasks. The results show how database-guided rewriting improves output validity and yields favorable cost-quality trade-offs compared with static, manually written prompts.
As semiconductor manufacturing advances toward sub-2nm nodes, local place-and-route (P&R) design-rule violation (DRV) fixing is increasingly limited by complex rule interactions, dense multi-layer routing geometries, and foundry-specific constraints. While Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated strong capabilities in EDA scripting and documentation, their application to visual layout understanding remains largely unexplored: diagnosing DRC violations from layout imagery demands precise geometric reasoning and foundry-specific rule knowledge absent from general-purpose VLM training. We propose SCALE, a framework with a self-supervised layout-generation stage for local DRV fixing at advanced nodes. Multi-layer layout geometry is serialized into structured text, and a fine-tuned language model learns to reconstruct randomly masked polygons from surrounding BEOL context alone without violation labels. At inference, natural-language rule constraints and high-temperature sampling steer generation toward diverse, violation-prone layout variants validated by an industrial signoff DRC checker, producing DRC-annotated layout--violation pairs used to fine-tune a domain-adapted DRC-VLM. This VLM provides rule-aware geometric guidance for local DRV repair, boosting state-of-the-art agents' solve rates by +12--25% (up to 97%) on 100 real sub-2nm cases spanning enclosure, spacing, width, and color-spacing violations.
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As semiconductor manufacturing advances toward sub-2nm nodes, local place-and-route (P&R) design-rule violation (DRV) fixing is increasingly limited by complex rule interactions, dense multi-layer routing geometries, and foundry-specific constraints. While Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated strong capabilities in EDA scripting and documentation, their application to visual layout understanding remains largely unexplored: diagnosing DRC violations from layout imagery demands precise geometric reasoning and foundry-specific rule knowledge absent from general-purpose VLM training. We propose SCALE, a framework with a self-supervised layout-generation stage for local DRV fixing at advanced nodes. Multi-layer layout geometry is serialized into structured text, and a fine-tuned language model learns to reconstruct randomly masked polygons from surrounding BEOL context alone without violation labels. At inference, natural-language rule constraints and high-temperature sampling steer generation toward diverse, violation-prone layout variants validated by an industrial signoff DRC checker, producing DRC-annotated layout--violation pairs used to fine-tune a domain-adapted DRC-VLM. This VLM provides rule-aware geometric guidance for local DRV repair, boosting state-of-the-art agents' solve rates by +12--25% (up to 97%) on 100 real sub-2nm cases spanning enclosure, spacing, width, and color-spacing violations.
作者Shoya Otsu, Kei Suzuki, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Jing Liu, Ye Wang
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) remain difficult to detect because only a small fraction of events in large-scale logs are attack-related, and investigation is expensive and hard to scale. Prior machine-learning approaches can reduce analyst workload, but they often rely on heavily curated training data and sophisticated preprocessing pipelines. Building and maintaining such pipelines require substantial domain expertise and engineering cost. Motivated by insights from a study of a strong APT detection baseline, we propose CAPTAIN (Context-Augmented Perplexity-based Threat Activity log detectIoN), a perplexity-based detector that leverages general, pre-trained language models with minimal, domain-agnostic preprocessing, enabling robust scoring of long, minimally processed log entries. CAPTAIN encodes recent history with an encoder model and a Q-Former-style bridge, then injects the compact context tokens into the decoder input so that perplexity reflects temporal context. To improve stability, CAPTAIN additionally applies smoothing filters to the perplexity time series. Across APT-oriented benchmarks, CAPTAIN competes with strong existing baselines and remains robust under substantially less curated inputs, that reduces the development and operational cost of advanced log preprocessing.
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Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) remain difficult to detect because only a small fraction of events in large-scale logs are attack-related, and investigation is expensive and hard to scale. Prior machine-learning approaches can reduce analyst workload, but they often rely on heavily curated training data and sophisticated preprocessing pipelines. Building and maintaining such pipelines require substantial domain expertise and engineering cost. Motivated by insights from a study of a strong APT detection baseline, we propose CAPTAIN (Context-Augmented Perplexity-based Threat Activity log detectIoN), a perplexity-based detector that leverages general, pre-trained language models with minimal, domain-agnostic preprocessing, enabling robust scoring of long, minimally processed log entries. CAPTAIN encodes recent history with an encoder model and a Q-Former-style bridge, then injects the compact context tokens into the decoder input so that perplexity reflects temporal context. To improve stability, CAPTAIN additionally applies smoothing filters to the perplexity time series. Across APT-oriented benchmarks, CAPTAIN competes with strong existing baselines and remains robust under substantially less curated inputs, that reduces the development and operational cost of advanced log preprocessing.
作者Zhetong Zhang, Honghao Fu, Miao Xu, Yiwei Wang, Yujun Cai
As Video Large Language Models are increasingly deployed in real-world applications, ensuring their safety alignment has become critical. Counterintuitively, we find that harmful videos paired with benign queries achieve higher attack success rates than the same videos paired with explicitly harmful queries. To understand the underlying mechanism of this vulnerability, we present V-DEAL, a three-level diagnostic framework that jointly analyzes this failure across model behaviour, understanding, and internal representations. By progressively ruling out perception failure and quantifying the model's internal refusal tendency, V-DEAL provides a new diagnostic perspective for analyzing the underlying mechanism of the observed vulnerability. We tested six Video LLMs on three public benchmarks and observed that models correctly recognize harmful video content with over 81% accuracy, yet the average attack success rate still reaches 48.33% under the condition pairing harmful videos with benign queries. Hidden-state analysis further shows that visual understanding activates a weaker refusal tendency than textual understanding. Furthermore, we introduce a prompt injection intervention method that reduces attack success rates by an average of 48.24 percentage points and achieves performance comparable to prior fine-tuning-based methods, providing an effective and practical means to address such safety risks in Video LLMs.
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As Video Large Language Models are increasingly deployed in real-world applications, ensuring their safety alignment has become critical. Counterintuitively, we find that harmful videos paired with benign queries achieve higher attack success rates than the same videos paired with explicitly harmful queries. To understand the underlying mechanism of this vulnerability, we present V-DEAL, a three-level diagnostic framework that jointly analyzes this failure across model behaviour, understanding, and internal representations. By progressively ruling out perception failure and quantifying the model's internal refusal tendency, V-DEAL provides a new diagnostic perspective for analyzing the underlying mechanism of the observed vulnerability. We tested six Video LLMs on three public benchmarks and observed that models correctly recognize harmful video content with over 81% accuracy, yet the average attack success rate still reaches 48.33% under the condition pairing harmful videos with benign queries. Hidden-state analysis further shows that visual understanding activates a weaker refusal tendency than textual understanding. Furthermore, we introduce a prompt injection intervention method that reduces attack success rates by an average of 48.24 percentage points and achieves performance comparable to prior fine-tuning-based methods, providing an effective and practical means to address such safety risks in Video LLMs.
作者Johannes Schmidt, Mohamed Maizia, Victor Lagerkvist, Johannes K. Fichte
The propositional abduction problem is a well-known form of non-monotonic reasoning where we are asked to find an explanation of a given manifestation. Recently, there has been an influx of results asking more refined questions about the solution space rather than only individual solutions. For example, we might be interested in finding two solutions that are sufficiently far from each other (diverse solutions) in the solution space. In this paper we consider a related representation question where we ask if a given set of explanations S can represent any other explanation (that is, whether their symmetric difference is smaller than a given k). We first study this problem from a classical complexity perspective and obtain a complete classification. While only a handful of cases are tractable, the increase in complexity compared to classical abduction is often smaller than expected. We then study the parameterized complexity for several parameters and obtain new tractable and hard cases. Interestingly, a full parameterized complexity classification would require resolving the parameterized complexity of the covering radius problem from coding theory. To the best of our knowledge, no useful relationship between coding theory and non-monotonic reasoning has previously been established, but such connections seemingly become important when asking more complex questions about solution spaces.
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The propositional abduction problem is a well-known form of non-monotonic reasoning where we are asked to find an explanation of a given manifestation. Recently, there has been an influx of results asking more refined questions about the solution space rather than only individual solutions. For example, we might be interested in finding two solutions that are sufficiently far from each other (diverse solutions) in the solution space. In this paper we consider a related representation question where we ask if a given set of explanations S can represent any other explanation (that is, whether their symmetric difference is smaller than a given k). We first study this problem from a classical complexity perspective and obtain a complete classification. While only a handful of cases are tractable, the increase in complexity compared to classical abduction is often smaller than expected. We then study the parameterized complexity for several parameters and obtain new tractable and hard cases. Interestingly, a full parameterized complexity classification would require resolving the parameterized complexity of the covering radius problem from coding theory. To the best of our knowledge, no useful relationship between coding theory and non-monotonic reasoning has previously been established, but such connections seemingly become important when asking more complex questions about solution spaces.
Goal reasoning in Non-Axiomatic Logic (NAL) explains how an adaptive system derives means for realizing desired events under insufficient knowledge and resources. However, the representation of avoidance is less clear. A common convention is to express ``avoid $G$'' as the goal sentence ``$\neg G!$'', but this notation conflates two different readings: pursuing the negated event $\neg G$, and avoiding the positive event $G$. This paper shows that the conflation can produce a paradoxical case in which an avoidance intention is converted into a positive goal to act merely because acting is usually followed by the absence of hurt. Starting from NAL's basic definition of goals, the framework is extended with a corresponding definition of anti-goals, so that avoidance can be represented without treating it as the pursuit of a negated event. Finally, a mental operation, $\op{prevent}$, is introduced to connect anti-goal reasoning with ordinary goal reasoning in cases of active prevention. Four minimal case studies check that the resulting rules distinguish pursuit, passive avoidance, active prevention, and withholding action to preserve a desired event.
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Goal reasoning in Non-Axiomatic Logic (NAL) explains how an adaptive system derives means for realizing desired events under insufficient knowledge and resources. However, the representation of avoidance is less clear. A common convention is to express ``avoid $G$'' as the goal sentence ``$\neg G!$'', but this notation conflates two different readings: pursuing the negated event $\neg G$, and avoiding the positive event $G$. This paper shows that the conflation can produce a paradoxical case in which an avoidance intention is converted into a positive goal to act merely because acting is usually followed by the absence of hurt. Starting from NAL's basic definition of goals, the framework is extended with a corresponding definition of anti-goals, so that avoidance can be represented without treating it as the pursuit of a negated event. Finally, a mental operation, $\op{prevent}$, is introduced to connect anti-goal reasoning with ordinary goal reasoning in cases of active prevention. Four minimal case studies check that the resulting rules distinguish pursuit, passive avoidance, active prevention, and withholding action to preserve a desired event.
Chemical reasoning language models are expected to derive molecular answers through faithful chain-of-thought (CoT). However, across four reasoning model families and twelve chemistry tasks, hallucination is widespread and largely decoupled from answer correctness: correct answers often coexist with fabricated structural claims absent from the relevant molecules. Yet this does not make the reasoning trace computationally irrelevant. Attribution analyses suggest a shared scratchpad function expressed in model-specific forms: Chem-R and ether-0 rely on fragmented SMILES drafts, whereas ChemDFM-R emphasizes scaffold, positional, and naming cues. Notably, perturbing Chem-R's SMILES sketches degrades generation, showing that structural drafts can be causally load-bearing even when verbal structural claims are largely inert. Together, these results show that chemical CoT is neither a faithful explanation nor merely a post-hoc rationalization, but a hallucination-prone molecular scratchpad. This finding cautions against treating CoT as direct evidence of faithful reasoning and motivates process-level supervision beyond answer-only evaluation.
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Chemical reasoning language models are expected to derive molecular answers through faithful chain-of-thought (CoT). However, across four reasoning model families and twelve chemistry tasks, hallucination is widespread and largely decoupled from answer correctness: correct answers often coexist with fabricated structural claims absent from the relevant molecules. Yet this does not make the reasoning trace computationally irrelevant. Attribution analyses suggest a shared scratchpad function expressed in model-specific forms: Chem-R and ether-0 rely on fragmented SMILES drafts, whereas ChemDFM-R emphasizes scaffold, positional, and naming cues. Notably, perturbing Chem-R's SMILES sketches degrades generation, showing that structural drafts can be causally load-bearing even when verbal structural claims are largely inert. Together, these results show that chemical CoT is neither a faithful explanation nor merely a post-hoc rationalization, but a hallucination-prone molecular scratchpad. This finding cautions against treating CoT as direct evidence of faithful reasoning and motivates process-level supervision beyond answer-only evaluation.
We present the interactions with an LLM (Large Language Model) aiming at proving that the square root of 2 is not a rational number in an LP (Logic Programming) context. We start from a few basic pure logic programming predicate definitions. We rely on the LPTP (Logic Program Theorem Prover) system for stating and proving properties about logic programs. As the proof language of LPTP is based on natural deduction, the proofs are human readable. In our case study, we sketch in LPTP the usual proof showing the irrationality of the square root of 2. Then we describe the interactions we had with the LLM. We end up with a complete formal proof, partially generated by an LLM and fully proof-checked by LPTP.
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We present the interactions with an LLM (Large Language Model) aiming at proving that the square root of 2 is not a rational number in an LP (Logic Programming) context. We start from a few basic pure logic programming predicate definitions. We rely on the LPTP (Logic Program Theorem Prover) system for stating and proving properties about logic programs. As the proof language of LPTP is based on natural deduction, the proofs are human readable. In our case study, we sketch in LPTP the usual proof showing the irrationality of the square root of 2. Then we describe the interactions we had with the LLM. We end up with a complete formal proof, partially generated by an LLM and fully proof-checked by LPTP.
作者Minsun Kim, S. Moonwara A. Monisha, Zihan Wu, David H. Smith
As large language models (LLMs) become integrated into programming education, learner-facing systems increasingly differ in how that assistance is bounded, enacted, and controlled. These governance decisions are often described implicitly, making it difficult to compare systems in educationally meaningful ways. To address this gap, we conduct a scoping review and qualitative synthesis of 90 peer-reviewed LLM-based programming support systems in CS education. We analyze assistance governance through three dimensions, which we refer to collectively as PEA: Policy, capturing what forms of help are allowed or restricted; Enforcement, capturing how those boundaries are operationalized through interaction and system behavior; and Authority, capturing who can configure, adapt, or override them during use. Our findings show that systems often share similar pedagogical goals, but implement those goals through varied enforcement mechanisms. At the same time, authority remains highly centralized in system logic, with fewer systems giving learners or instructors runtime control. This work contributes PEA as a three-dimensional analytic lens, a governance codebook empirically refined within these dimensions, and a map of underexplored configurations in the current design space of LLM-based programming support. By making these explicit and comparable, PEA offers a vocabulary for analyzing existing systems and designing future tools that are pedagogically bounded, configurable, and accountable.
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As large language models (LLMs) become integrated into programming education, learner-facing systems increasingly differ in how that assistance is bounded, enacted, and controlled. These governance decisions are often described implicitly, making it difficult to compare systems in educationally meaningful ways. To address this gap, we conduct a scoping review and qualitative synthesis of 90 peer-reviewed LLM-based programming support systems in CS education. We analyze assistance governance through three dimensions, which we refer to collectively as PEA: Policy, capturing what forms of help are allowed or restricted; Enforcement, capturing how those boundaries are operationalized through interaction and system behavior; and Authority, capturing who can configure, adapt, or override them during use. Our findings show that systems often share similar pedagogical goals, but implement those goals through varied enforcement mechanisms. At the same time, authority remains highly centralized in system logic, with fewer systems giving learners or instructors runtime control. This work contributes PEA as a three-dimensional analytic lens, a governance codebook empirically refined within these dimensions, and a map of underexplored configurations in the current design space of LLM-based programming support. By making these explicit and comparable, PEA offers a vocabulary for analyzing existing systems and designing future tools that are pedagogically bounded, configurable, and accountable.
Chain-of-thought reasoning models such as DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B exhibit a bimodal convergence pattern: generations either terminate within a token budget (converged) or exhaust it without reaching a conclusion (non-converged). We characterize this phenomenon empirically, showing that converged generations achieve 90.3% accuracy on AIME 1983-2024 while non-converged ones achieve only 6.6%, with an overall convergence rate of 62.0%. We then ask whether this outcome is detectable early in the thinking chain using internal model representations. Training linear probes on hidden-state activations at token positions 50-300, we find that layer-20 activations at token 150 achieve AUC 0.608 (+-0.080, 5-fold CV), reliably above chance even at token 50. Activation probes consistently outperform behavioral baselines derived from token entropy and repetition statistics. A sweep-level permutation test yields p=0.063 (100,000 permutations), consistent with a modest signal that our sample size cannot confirm at conventional thresholds. These findings suggest that convergence fate is partially encoded in intermediate representations well before the generation ends, opening a path toward early-exit inference and adaptive compute allocation.
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Chain-of-thought reasoning models such as DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B exhibit a bimodal convergence pattern: generations either terminate within a token budget (converged) or exhaust it without reaching a conclusion (non-converged). We characterize this phenomenon empirically, showing that converged generations achieve 90.3% accuracy on AIME 1983-2024 while non-converged ones achieve only 6.6%, with an overall convergence rate of 62.0%. We then ask whether this outcome is detectable early in the thinking chain using internal model representations. Training linear probes on hidden-state activations at token positions 50-300, we find that layer-20 activations at token 150 achieve AUC 0.608 (+-0.080, 5-fold CV), reliably above chance even at token 50. Activation probes consistently outperform behavioral baselines derived from token entropy and repetition statistics. A sweep-level permutation test yields p=0.063 (100,000 permutations), consistent with a modest signal that our sample size cannot confirm at conventional thresholds. These findings suggest that convergence fate is partially encoded in intermediate representations well before the generation ends, opening a path toward early-exit inference and adaptive compute allocation.
Neurosymbolic (NeSy) systems integrate neural networks with logical reasoning to achieve both generalization and interpretability, but recent work has shown they are susceptible to shortcut reasoning behaviors. We propose a novel method using matrix-based differentiable logic programming to mitigate reasoning shortcuts in two phenomena: constraint satisfaction shortcuts, where constraints are satisfied without achieving the intended task, and cognition shortcuts, where biased data leads to semantically incorrect concept mappings despite logically sound inference. Building on recent matrix-based logic programming semantics, we introduce design elements to mitigate shortcuts, including a unified encoding of rules and constraints in a single matrix. We also identify connections to fuzzy logic t-norms and empirically compare their gradient flow properties. Through carefully designed experiments on MNIST variants, we show that one-to-one grounding of neural outputs to logical atoms significantly reduces both shortcut types compared to previous methods that rely on soft probability distributions. We then confirm that architectural choices in coupling symbolic knowledge with neural learning play a critical role in shortcut mitigation.
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Neurosymbolic (NeSy) systems integrate neural networks with logical reasoning to achieve both generalization and interpretability, but recent work has shown they are susceptible to shortcut reasoning behaviors. We propose a novel method using matrix-based differentiable logic programming to mitigate reasoning shortcuts in two phenomena: constraint satisfaction shortcuts, where constraints are satisfied without achieving the intended task, and cognition shortcuts, where biased data leads to semantically incorrect concept mappings despite logically sound inference. Building on recent matrix-based logic programming semantics, we introduce design elements to mitigate shortcuts, including a unified encoding of rules and constraints in a single matrix. We also identify connections to fuzzy logic t-norms and empirically compare their gradient flow properties. Through carefully designed experiments on MNIST variants, we show that one-to-one grounding of neural outputs to logical atoms significantly reduces both shortcut types compared to previous methods that rely on soft probability distributions. We then confirm that architectural choices in coupling symbolic knowledge with neural learning play a critical role in shortcut mitigation.
Bibliometric indicators - citation counts, h-indexes, co-authorship networks - have long anchored science, technology, and innovation (STI) analytics, yet suffer from temporal lag, semantic shallowness, and an inability to capture the non-linear dynamics of contemporary knowledge ecosystems. Dynamic knowledge graphs and large language models (LLMs) have each been proposed as remedies, but neither is sufficient alone: existing scholarly knowledge graphs remain largely static, while LLM-driven pipelines are prone to hallucination, opacity, and corpus bias without structured grounding. This paper proposes a hybrid, symbolic-first framework integrating all three traditions under explicit methodological constraint. Organized across five layers - an open scholarly data backbone, a dynamic versioned knowledge graph, a constrained LLM-assisted semantic augmentation layer, a multi-layer validation pipeline, and an analytics layer - the framework positions LLMs strictly as generators of provisional candidate enrichments. Candidates become analytically admissible only after passing structural, evidentiary, comparative, and selective expert validation, with full provenance recorded at every stage. The analytics layer supports both established bibliometric indicators and extended graph-based analyses, including trend emergence detection, science-to-technology pathway mapping, and policy-oriented gap analysis. The framework's central theoretical contribution is treating validation as the mediating principle between semantic flexibility and epistemic discipline, enabling STI analytics that is semantically richer and temporally more responsive than static bibliometrics while remaining aligned with the evidentiary standards of science-of-science research. Governance considerations addressing reproducibility, bias, and auditability are also discussed.
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Bibliometric indicators - citation counts, h-indexes, co-authorship networks - have long anchored science, technology, and innovation (STI) analytics, yet suffer from temporal lag, semantic shallowness, and an inability to capture the non-linear dynamics of contemporary knowledge ecosystems. Dynamic knowledge graphs and large language models (LLMs) have each been proposed as remedies, but neither is sufficient alone: existing scholarly knowledge graphs remain largely static, while LLM-driven pipelines are prone to hallucination, opacity, and corpus bias without structured grounding. This paper proposes a hybrid, symbolic-first framework integrating all three traditions under explicit methodological constraint. Organized across five layers - an open scholarly data backbone, a dynamic versioned knowledge graph, a constrained LLM-assisted semantic augmentation layer, a multi-layer validation pipeline, and an analytics layer - the framework positions LLMs strictly as generators of provisional candidate enrichments. Candidates become analytically admissible only after passing structural, evidentiary, comparative, and selective expert validation, with full provenance recorded at every stage. The analytics layer supports both established bibliometric indicators and extended graph-based analyses, including trend emergence detection, science-to-technology pathway mapping, and policy-oriented gap analysis. The framework's central theoretical contribution is treating validation as the mediating principle between semantic flexibility and epistemic discipline, enabling STI analytics that is semantically richer and temporally more responsive than static bibliometrics while remaining aligned with the evidentiary standards of science-of-science research. Governance considerations addressing reproducibility, bias, and auditability are also discussed.
In capital-markets workflows the question is rarely whether a large language model can produce a fluent draft, but whether the draft is bankable: defensible in front of a counter-party or a regulator, with the documents in hand. Existing methods address parts of that gap: open-domain QA benchmarks reward surface accuracy, and finance benchmarks (FinanceBench, FinQA, ConvFinQA) advance document-grounded and numerical QA but evaluate at the question-answer layer rather than the workflow outputs practitioners defend. We introduce CM-LRS, a Capital Markets LLM Reliability Score, evaluating outputs at the workflow-output layer across seven dimensions: factual accuracy, evidence traceability, numerical consistency, workflow completeness, source discipline, decision usefulness, and reviewability/auditability. Each is scored 0-5 against a rubric anchored on signals reviewers in regulated settings use; the aggregate is tunable to the workflow. We demonstrate CM-LRS on five workflows (DCM transaction-terms extraction, precedent retrieval, issuer profile synthesis, M&A transaction-comparable reasoning, ECM transaction-terms extraction) over public SEC EDGAR filings, a public UK takeover release, and fictional synthetic supplements, scoring four models against four independent LLM judges spanning three model families. Three findings. First, the frontier closed-source models cluster within 0.22 points on four-judge averaged CM-LRS (Sonnet 4.6 = 4.31, Opus 4.7 = 4.30, GPT-5.5 = 4.09); all four judges place the open-weights baseline (Llama 3.3 70B = 3.15) last. Second, that gap concentrates on retrieval (2.23) and synthesis (2.15), not extraction (0.84). Third, Decision Usefulness shows the widest cross-model dispersion of any dimension (4.0 points on issuer profiling) and top-tier inter-judge agreement (mean r = 0.52). Plausibility is cheap. Bankability is the bar.
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In capital-markets workflows the question is rarely whether a large language model can produce a fluent draft, but whether the draft is bankable: defensible in front of a counter-party or a regulator, with the documents in hand. Existing methods address parts of that gap: open-domain QA benchmarks reward surface accuracy, and finance benchmarks (FinanceBench, FinQA, ConvFinQA) advance document-grounded and numerical QA but evaluate at the question-answer layer rather than the workflow outputs practitioners defend. We introduce CM-LRS, a Capital Markets LLM Reliability Score, evaluating outputs at the workflow-output layer across seven dimensions: factual accuracy, evidence traceability, numerical consistency, workflow completeness, source discipline, decision usefulness, and reviewability/auditability. Each is scored 0-5 against a rubric anchored on signals reviewers in regulated settings use; the aggregate is tunable to the workflow. We demonstrate CM-LRS on five workflows (DCM transaction-terms extraction, precedent retrieval, issuer profile synthesis, M&A transaction-comparable reasoning, ECM transaction-terms extraction) over public SEC EDGAR filings, a public UK takeover release, and fictional synthetic supplements, scoring four models against four independent LLM judges spanning three model families. Three findings. First, the frontier closed-source models cluster within 0.22 points on four-judge averaged CM-LRS (Sonnet 4.6 = 4.31, Opus 4.7 = 4.30, GPT-5.5 = 4.09); all four judges place the open-weights baseline (Llama 3.3 70B = 3.15) last. Second, that gap concentrates on retrieval (2.23) and synthesis (2.15), not extraction (0.84). Third, Decision Usefulness shows the widest cross-model dispersion of any dimension (4.0 points on issuer profiling) and top-tier inter-judge agreement (mean r = 0.52). Plausibility is cheap. Bankability is the bar.
Concurrent stateful library APIs expose behavior through evolving resource ownership, lifecycle states, and competing interleavings. Large language models can synthesize executable Rust tests, but their outputs often violate API preconditions, remain shallow, or reduce concurrency to accidental sequential traces. Conversely, model-based and systematic testing techniques provide semantic control but commonly require substantial handwritten code to turn abstract scenarios into executable tests. This paper addresses the gap between formal scenario design and low-cost test concretization. We present a Petri-net-guided methodology for test generation over concurrent stateful Rust APIs. The method represents API resources, lifecycle conditions, and causal dependencies as colored tokens and transitions; derives legal deep-state, near-legal, and partial-order concurrent scenarios; and uses these scenarios as a constrained intermediate representation for LLM-based code synthesis. A local-faithfulness contract and structural repair loop preserve the modeled intent during concretization, while Petri-guided schedule shaping prioritizes high-conflict concurrency skeletons for systematic exploration. A layered semantic oracle then distinguishes synthesis failures from violations of the target API's expected behavior.
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Concurrent stateful library APIs expose behavior through evolving resource ownership, lifecycle states, and competing interleavings. Large language models can synthesize executable Rust tests, but their outputs often violate API preconditions, remain shallow, or reduce concurrency to accidental sequential traces. Conversely, model-based and systematic testing techniques provide semantic control but commonly require substantial handwritten code to turn abstract scenarios into executable tests. This paper addresses the gap between formal scenario design and low-cost test concretization. We present a Petri-net-guided methodology for test generation over concurrent stateful Rust APIs. The method represents API resources, lifecycle conditions, and causal dependencies as colored tokens and transitions; derives legal deep-state, near-legal, and partial-order concurrent scenarios; and uses these scenarios as a constrained intermediate representation for LLM-based code synthesis. A local-faithfulness contract and structural repair loop preserve the modeled intent during concretization, while Petri-guided schedule shaping prioritizes high-conflict concurrency skeletons for systematic exploration. A layered semantic oracle then distinguishes synthesis failures from violations of the target API's expected behavior.
Large language models (LLMs) have rapidly and significantly entered scientific workflows, but it remains unclear how their diffusion is associated with changes in scientists' strategies in research directions and team building. We link PubMed Central full text with OpenAlex publication and collaboration histories for 775,323 scientists and analyze CRediT contribution statements from 137,120 multi-author papers. After 2022, scientists increasingly published across more intellectually distant fields and entered fields in which they had not previously worked. These increases in interdisciplinarity and exploration were especially pronounced among established scientists and scientists from non-English-speaking low- and middle-income countries. Authors with stronger AI-writing signals were already more interdisciplinary and exploratory before the widespread adoption of LLMs, and the gap widened further after 2022 compared with authors with weaker AI-writing signals. Scientists' collaboration networks also became more interdisciplinary after 2022. Yet, among authors with stronger AI-writing signals, research interdisciplinarity was less closely tied to the disciplinary diversity of their collaborators. The division of labor within research teams also became more differentiated. Contributors on papers published after 2022 reported narrower role sets on average, coauthors shared fewer roles in common, and their role profiles became less rigid and more fluid. Software and validation roles increased, while conceptual and management roles decreased. These patterns suggest that team members are taking on more distinct responsibilities and may rely less on one another to perform research tasks. Overall, this study indicates that the LLM era coincides with a broader reorganization of scientific exploration, collaboration, and the division of labor.
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Large language models (LLMs) have rapidly and significantly entered scientific workflows, but it remains unclear how their diffusion is associated with changes in scientists' strategies in research directions and team building. We link PubMed Central full text with OpenAlex publication and collaboration histories for 775,323 scientists and analyze CRediT contribution statements from 137,120 multi-author papers. After 2022, scientists increasingly published across more intellectually distant fields and entered fields in which they had not previously worked. These increases in interdisciplinarity and exploration were especially pronounced among established scientists and scientists from non-English-speaking low- and middle-income countries. Authors with stronger AI-writing signals were already more interdisciplinary and exploratory before the widespread adoption of LLMs, and the gap widened further after 2022 compared with authors with weaker AI-writing signals. Scientists' collaboration networks also became more interdisciplinary after 2022. Yet, among authors with stronger AI-writing signals, research interdisciplinarity was less closely tied to the disciplinary diversity of their collaborators. The division of labor within research teams also became more differentiated. Contributors on papers published after 2022 reported narrower role sets on average, coauthors shared fewer roles in common, and their role profiles became less rigid and more fluid. Software and validation roles increased, while conceptual and management roles decreased. These patterns suggest that team members are taking on more distinct responsibilities and may rely less on one another to perform research tasks. Overall, this study indicates that the LLM era coincides with a broader reorganization of scientific exploration, collaboration, and the division of labor.
Zero-shot summarization using Large Language Models (LLMs) has significantly advanced the abstractive summarization task by producing coherent and fluent summaries. However, underlying stochasticity of the large language models raises concerns about the stability and trustworthiness of the LLM-generated summaries. This issue has become increasingly important due to proliferation of LLM-generated summaries in educational settings, where students and researchers summarize complex academic materials in zero-shot manner. We propose a novel two-level diagnostic protocol for benchmarking LLM-summarizers based on the stability of the generated summaries. At the lower level, document-level stability analysis is performed over multiple LLM-summaries generated under controlled environment, and the stability coefficient is computed. Each generated summary is scored for semantic and factual alignment with the original document, enabling estimation of stability along more than one dimensions. At the next level, observations from a stratified sample of documents drawn from the corpus are consolidated to estimate the stability index of the LLM-summarizer, which is the proxy for its trustworthiness. Our empirical investigation of three LLM-summarizers across three genres of documents reveals statistically significant differences in the generation-level variability among LLMs across summary evaluation metrics. This study advances the LLM-summarization research by evidential recognition of the stability problem in LLM-summaries and motivates further research towards development of robust, reliable and trustworthy LLM-summarizers.
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Zero-shot summarization using Large Language Models (LLMs) has significantly advanced the abstractive summarization task by producing coherent and fluent summaries. However, underlying stochasticity of the large language models raises concerns about the stability and trustworthiness of the LLM-generated summaries. This issue has become increasingly important due to proliferation of LLM-generated summaries in educational settings, where students and researchers summarize complex academic materials in zero-shot manner. We propose a novel two-level diagnostic protocol for benchmarking LLM-summarizers based on the stability of the generated summaries. At the lower level, document-level stability analysis is performed over multiple LLM-summaries generated under controlled environment, and the stability coefficient is computed. Each generated summary is scored for semantic and factual alignment with the original document, enabling estimation of stability along more than one dimensions. At the next level, observations from a stratified sample of documents drawn from the corpus are consolidated to estimate the stability index of the LLM-summarizer, which is the proxy for its trustworthiness. Our empirical investigation of three LLM-summarizers across three genres of documents reveals statistically significant differences in the generation-level variability among LLMs across summary evaluation metrics. This study advances the LLM-summarization research by evidential recognition of the stability problem in LLM-summaries and motivates further research towards development of robust, reliable and trustworthy LLM-summarizers.
作者Jesse Phillips, Tracy Hall, Paul Rayson, Mo El-Haj
Neural Source Code Summarisation (NSCS) aims to generate natural language summaries of source code to improve developers' and maintainers' understanding of code. Source code summaries are vital during the maintenance phase of the Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC), as they improve maintainers' understanding of code and help reduce the number of bugs and vulnerabilities in a software system. However, summaries are often missing, incomplete, or outdated in many software systems. Solutions to this problem use small, task-specific Transformer models or code-aware Large Language Models (LLMs). Task-specific Transformer-generated summaries often score well across many natural language generation (NLG) metrics, but these metrics reward lexical overlap rather than summary quality. Conversely, the ability of LLMs to capture semantics and produce high-quality summaries presents an exciting solution to this problem. This is especially relevant given the increased availability of LLMs and improvements in workstation hardware in recent years, which mean that some LLMs can now be run on developers' workstations. However, because of their abstractive nature, LLM-generated code summaries often differ greatly from developer-written summaries in the words and phrases they use, resulting in low scores across NLG metrics. We show how combining these two methods, by using Transformer-generated summaries in prompt engineering, may enable LLMs to create better source code summaries and help software practitioners maintain secure systems. We prompt four LLMs using four different prompts, with a task-specific Transformer used to assist the LLMs within the prompts. We present "Transformer-Assisted LLM-Based Source Code Summarisation", a method through which we observe an improvement of 7.8% in BLEU-4 and 5%.
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Neural Source Code Summarisation (NSCS) aims to generate natural language summaries of source code to improve developers' and maintainers' understanding of code. Source code summaries are vital during the maintenance phase of the Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC), as they improve maintainers' understanding of code and help reduce the number of bugs and vulnerabilities in a software system. However, summaries are often missing, incomplete, or outdated in many software systems. Solutions to this problem use small, task-specific Transformer models or code-aware Large Language Models (LLMs). Task-specific Transformer-generated summaries often score well across many natural language generation (NLG) metrics, but these metrics reward lexical overlap rather than summary quality. Conversely, the ability of LLMs to capture semantics and produce high-quality summaries presents an exciting solution to this problem. This is especially relevant given the increased availability of LLMs and improvements in workstation hardware in recent years, which mean that some LLMs can now be run on developers' workstations. However, because of their abstractive nature, LLM-generated code summaries often differ greatly from developer-written summaries in the words and phrases they use, resulting in low scores across NLG metrics. We show how combining these two methods, by using Transformer-generated summaries in prompt engineering, may enable LLMs to create better source code summaries and help software practitioners maintain secure systems. We prompt four LLMs using four different prompts, with a task-specific Transformer used to assist the LLMs within the prompts. We present "Transformer-Assisted LLM-Based Source Code Summarisation", a method through which we observe an improvement of 7.8% in BLEU-4 and 5%.
Scaling inference-time computation has emerged as a reliable method to improve the performance of large language models on complex reasoning and programming tasks. However, standard approaches such as independent sampling and sequential multi-turn refinement operate without token-level credit assignment, resulting in computational inefficiency, since valid reasoning prefixes are frequently discarded. In this work, we introduce Test-Time Scaling via Error Localization (TTEL), an inference-time algorithm that utilizes fixed or environment feedback to perform token-level error localization. By comparing conditional probabilities under informed feedback against a null-context baseline, TTEL isolates the step at which an error occurred. The algorithm then truncates the trajectory and branches a new generation, maximally reusing the valid prefix. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that TTEL establishes strictly dominating Pareto frontiers across sequential reasoning domains, measured by pass-at-k vs. generated-token cost. With Qwen3-8B on LiveCodeBench, TTEL attains a pass@64 of 71.0% while generating approximately half as many tokens as independent sampling (360.4k vs. 735.0k). Generalizing to math benchmarks AIME-2025 and HMMT-2025, TTEL cleanly outperforms competing test-time baselines across both Qwen3-8B and Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507.
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Scaling inference-time computation has emerged as a reliable method to improve the performance of large language models on complex reasoning and programming tasks. However, standard approaches such as independent sampling and sequential multi-turn refinement operate without token-level credit assignment, resulting in computational inefficiency, since valid reasoning prefixes are frequently discarded. In this work, we introduce Test-Time Scaling via Error Localization (TTEL), an inference-time algorithm that utilizes fixed or environment feedback to perform token-level error localization. By comparing conditional probabilities under informed feedback against a null-context baseline, TTEL isolates the step at which an error occurred. The algorithm then truncates the trajectory and branches a new generation, maximally reusing the valid prefix. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that TTEL establishes strictly dominating Pareto frontiers across sequential reasoning domains, measured by pass-at-k vs. generated-token cost. With Qwen3-8B on LiveCodeBench, TTEL attains a pass@64 of 71.0% while generating approximately half as many tokens as independent sampling (360.4k vs. 735.0k). Generalizing to math benchmarks AIME-2025 and HMMT-2025, TTEL cleanly outperforms competing test-time baselines across both Qwen3-8B and Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507.
作者Zhensheng Jin, Xin Dai, Zhenghao Liu, Chaojun Xiao, Huiyuan Xie, Yu Gu, Ge Yu, Maosong Sun
Large language models increasingly rely on long-form reasoning for complex tasks, yet their reasoning traces may drift away from the supplied context when evidence is sparse, noisy, or in conflict with parametric knowledge. Existing grounding methods either attach citations after generation or encourage evidence retrieval inside the trace, but they often do not ensure that cited content is sufficient for the local inference and final answer. We propose REFACT, an adaptive fact-restatement citation framework that trains models to decide when a reasoning step needs contextual grounding and at what granularity source facts should be restated. This design avoids both unsupported inference and indiscriminate fact copying by turning citations into answer-supporting intermediate states. REFACT is optimized with a two-stage SFT-to-RL pipeline in which a citation-utility reward encourages cited facts to be well-formed, source-traceable, and answer-sufficient. Experiments on LongBench, LV-Eval, and ConFiQA show that REFACT improves long-context QA and counterfactual faithfulness while substantially reducing token consumption. Further analysis shows that REFACT preserves more answer-bearing evidence with fewer restated facts, yielding reasoning traces that are denser rather than longer. All code and data are available at https://github.com/NEUIR/REFACT.
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Large language models increasingly rely on long-form reasoning for complex tasks, yet their reasoning traces may drift away from the supplied context when evidence is sparse, noisy, or in conflict with parametric knowledge. Existing grounding methods either attach citations after generation or encourage evidence retrieval inside the trace, but they often do not ensure that cited content is sufficient for the local inference and final answer. We propose REFACT, an adaptive fact-restatement citation framework that trains models to decide when a reasoning step needs contextual grounding and at what granularity source facts should be restated. This design avoids both unsupported inference and indiscriminate fact copying by turning citations into answer-supporting intermediate states. REFACT is optimized with a two-stage SFT-to-RL pipeline in which a citation-utility reward encourages cited facts to be well-formed, source-traceable, and answer-sufficient. Experiments on LongBench, LV-Eval, and ConFiQA show that REFACT improves long-context QA and counterfactual faithfulness while substantially reducing token consumption. Further analysis shows that REFACT preserves more answer-bearing evidence with fewer restated facts, yielding reasoning traces that are denser rather than longer. All code and data are available at https://github.com/NEUIR/REFACT.
Building socially calibrated large language models, which can learn from others without simply yielding to them, requires more than reducing sycophancy as a one-dimensional failure mode. Models must distinguish when to incorporate others' perspectives from when to maintain a well-grounded moral judgment. We study the broader resistance-compliance process governing this distinction. Across three studies, we show that models' judgment revision is structured along three dimensions that parallel classic phenomena in human social psychology: the distance between an incoming view and the model's initial position, the source attribution of that view, and the coalition structure supporting it. Models are generally more receptive to nearby positions, more influenced by views presented as their own prior judgments, and differently responsive to group pressure. These findings recast sycophancy as one expression of a broader judgment-updating process shaped by social influence. Our framework provides a principled basis for distinguishing constructive belief revision from sycophantic compliance, thereby supporting better alignment in morally consequential interactions.
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Building socially calibrated large language models, which can learn from others without simply yielding to them, requires more than reducing sycophancy as a one-dimensional failure mode. Models must distinguish when to incorporate others' perspectives from when to maintain a well-grounded moral judgment. We study the broader resistance-compliance process governing this distinction. Across three studies, we show that models' judgment revision is structured along three dimensions that parallel classic phenomena in human social psychology: the distance between an incoming view and the model's initial position, the source attribution of that view, and the coalition structure supporting it. Models are generally more receptive to nearby positions, more influenced by views presented as their own prior judgments, and differently responsive to group pressure. These findings recast sycophancy as one expression of a broader judgment-updating process shaped by social influence. Our framework provides a principled basis for distinguishing constructive belief revision from sycophantic compliance, thereby supporting better alignment in morally consequential interactions.
Despite remarkable progress in visual understanding, Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) remain prone to hallucinations when reasoning about spatial relationships, often producing judgments that contradict the true 3D structure of the scene. Though several existing works have proposed to mitigate hallucinations, our analysis indicates that they show limited effectiveness in spatial reasoning, as they fail to bridge the fundamental gap between 2D visual representations and 3D spatial reality. Based on this finding, we define hallucinations arising from insufficient spatial structure modeling as spatial reasoning hallucination, a subcategory of relation hallucination that existing mitigation methods fail to address. We further identify three typical scenarios where such hallucinations frequently occur: perspective effects, object orientation, and viewpoint changes. To this end, we propose Geo3R, a training-free, plug-and-play framework that incorporates geometric evidence and structured 3D reasoning to mitigate spatial reasoning hallucination. Experiments on three benchmarks, covering 18 tasks across all three scenarios, show that Geo3R substantially reduces spatial reasoning hallucination across diverse MLLMs without additional training, outperforming existing models and methods.
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Despite remarkable progress in visual understanding, Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) remain prone to hallucinations when reasoning about spatial relationships, often producing judgments that contradict the true 3D structure of the scene. Though several existing works have proposed to mitigate hallucinations, our analysis indicates that they show limited effectiveness in spatial reasoning, as they fail to bridge the fundamental gap between 2D visual representations and 3D spatial reality. Based on this finding, we define hallucinations arising from insufficient spatial structure modeling as spatial reasoning hallucination, a subcategory of relation hallucination that existing mitigation methods fail to address. We further identify three typical scenarios where such hallucinations frequently occur: perspective effects, object orientation, and viewpoint changes. To this end, we propose Geo3R, a training-free, plug-and-play framework that incorporates geometric evidence and structured 3D reasoning to mitigate spatial reasoning hallucination. Experiments on three benchmarks, covering 18 tasks across all three scenarios, show that Geo3R substantially reduces spatial reasoning hallucination across diverse MLLMs without additional training, outperforming existing models and methods.
Large language models (LLMs) achieve strong generation and reasoning performance, but the Transformer architecture incurs high inference cost. Existing acceleration methods often rely on task-specific fine-tuning or training from scratch, increasing adaptation cost and limiting cross-task usability. We present an Adaptive Depth Sparse Framework (AdaDSF) that converts off-the-shelf pre-trained LLMs into depth-sparse models without full retraining. Our key insight is that layers contribute unequally to representation transformation, characterized by the cosine similarity between layer input and output hidden states. Based on this, AdaDSF assigns layer-wise token retention ratios from similarity statistics, uses a lightweight router to select informative tokens at each layer, and introduces a feature-preserving alignment objective to match intermediate and final representations between sparse and dense models. On GPT-NeoX and Qwen2.5 over language modeling and commonsense reasoning, AdaDSF substantially reduces inference FLOPs while preserving performance close to dense counterparts. Under comparable sparsity, AdaDSF consistently yields smaller accuracy degradation than strong baselines including MoD, D-LLM, and DLO.
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Large language models (LLMs) achieve strong generation and reasoning performance, but the Transformer architecture incurs high inference cost. Existing acceleration methods often rely on task-specific fine-tuning or training from scratch, increasing adaptation cost and limiting cross-task usability. We present an Adaptive Depth Sparse Framework (AdaDSF) that converts off-the-shelf pre-trained LLMs into depth-sparse models without full retraining. Our key insight is that layers contribute unequally to representation transformation, characterized by the cosine similarity between layer input and output hidden states. Based on this, AdaDSF assigns layer-wise token retention ratios from similarity statistics, uses a lightweight router to select informative tokens at each layer, and introduces a feature-preserving alignment objective to match intermediate and final representations between sparse and dense models. On GPT-NeoX and Qwen2.5 over language modeling and commonsense reasoning, AdaDSF substantially reduces inference FLOPs while preserving performance close to dense counterparts. Under comparable sparsity, AdaDSF consistently yields smaller accuracy degradation than strong baselines including MoD, D-LLM, and DLO.
作者Seonglae Cho, Zekun Wu, Kleyton Da Costa, Rishi Kalra, Ilham Wicaksono, Adriano Koshiyama
Sparse autoencoder (SAE) features are used to interpret and steer large language models, yet whether a feature's causal role is stable across SAE families remains untested. Single-token features that activate on one vocabulary item provide the diagnostic case where ground truth permits direct comparison. We analyze 3.9M features across six models and three SAE families using zero-ablation at full layer depth. Single-token features cluster 4.7x tighter in decoder space and concentrate in early layers (Layer 0 in GPT2-Small; L0-L4 in Gemma). Ablating them yields Benjamini-Hochberg-significant logit reductions in 178 of 208 full-layer conditions, with depth controlling whether damage cascades downstream or shapes the output directly. Cross-family causal differences exceed within-family scale effects: on the same base model, GemmaScope and BatchTopK features remain causally anchored, while LlamaScope features are locally redundant. The target token's rank recovers to within 2x baseline 96-98% of the time after the same ablation, and a controlled activation-function comparison reverses sign within the same model, leaving training recipe as the residual candidate. Cross-family interpretability claims are therefore sensitive to training methodology, not just activation function or scale.
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Sparse autoencoder (SAE) features are used to interpret and steer large language models, yet whether a feature's causal role is stable across SAE families remains untested. Single-token features that activate on one vocabulary item provide the diagnostic case where ground truth permits direct comparison. We analyze 3.9M features across six models and three SAE families using zero-ablation at full layer depth. Single-token features cluster 4.7x tighter in decoder space and concentrate in early layers (Layer 0 in GPT2-Small; L0-L4 in Gemma). Ablating them yields Benjamini-Hochberg-significant logit reductions in 178 of 208 full-layer conditions, with depth controlling whether damage cascades downstream or shapes the output directly. Cross-family causal differences exceed within-family scale effects: on the same base model, GemmaScope and BatchTopK features remain causally anchored, while LlamaScope features are locally redundant. The target token's rank recovers to within 2x baseline 96-98% of the time after the same ablation, and a controlled activation-function comparison reverses sign within the same model, leaving training recipe as the residual candidate. Cross-family interpretability claims are therefore sensitive to training methodology, not just activation function or scale.