Showing 1–18 of 18 results for author: Shieh, M Q

Your Agent, Their Asset: A Real-World Safety Analysis of OpenClaw

Authors: Zijun Wang, Haoqin Tu, Letian Zhang, Hardy Chen, Juncheng Wu, Xiangyan Liu, Zhenlong Yuan, Tianyu Pang, Michael Qizhe Shieh, Fengze Liu, Zeyu Zheng, Huaxiu Yao, Yuyin Zhou, Cihang Xie

Abstract: OpenClaw, the most widely deployed personal AI agent in early 2026, operates with full local system access and integrates with sensitive services such as Gmail, Stripe, and the filesystem. While these broad privileges enable high levels of automation and powerful personalization, they also expose a substantial attack surface that existing sandboxed evaluations fail to capture. To address this gap,… ▽ More OpenClaw, the most widely deployed personal AI agent in early 2026, operates with full local system access and integrates with sensitive services such as Gmail, Stripe, and the filesystem. While these broad privileges enable high levels of automation and powerful personalization, they also expose a substantial attack surface that existing sandboxed evaluations fail to capture. To address this gap, we present the first real-world safety evaluation of OpenClaw and introduce the CIK taxonomy, which unifies an agent's persistent state into three dimensions, i.e., Capability, Identity, and Knowledge, for safety analysis. Our evaluations cover 12 attack scenarios on a live OpenClaw instance across four backbone models (Claude Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, and GPT-5.4). The results show that poisoning any single CIK dimension increases the average attack success rate from 24.6% to 64-74%, with even the most robust model exhibiting more than a threefold increase over its baseline vulnerability. We further assess three CIK-aligned defense strategies alongside a file-protection mechanism; however, the strongest defense still yields a 63.8% success rate under Capability-targeted attacks, while file protection blocks 97% of malicious injections but also prevents legitimate updates. Taken together, these findings show that the vulnerabilities are inherent to the agent architecture, necessitating more systematic safeguards to secure personal AI agents. Our project page is https://ucsc-vlaa.github.io/CIK-Bench. △ Less

Submitted 6 April, 2026; originally announced April 2026.

Gym-V: A Unified Vision Environment System for Agentic Vision Research

Authors: Fanqing Meng, Lingxiao Du, Jiawei Gu, Jiaqi Liao, Linjie Li, Zijian Wu, Xiangyan Liu, Ziqi Zhao, Mengkang Hu, Zichen Liu, Jiaheng Zhang, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: As agentic systems increasingly rely on reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards, standardized ``gym'' infrastructure has become essential for rapid iteration, reproducibility, and fair comparison. Vision agents lack such infrastructure, limiting systematic study of what drives their learning and where current models fall short. We introduce \textbf{Gym-V}, a unified platform of 179 procedur… ▽ More As agentic systems increasingly rely on reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards, standardized ``gym'' infrastructure has become essential for rapid iteration, reproducibility, and fair comparison. Vision agents lack such infrastructure, limiting systematic study of what drives their learning and where current models fall short. We introduce \textbf{Gym-V}, a unified platform of 179 procedurally generated visual environments across 10 domains with controllable difficulty, enabling controlled experiments that were previously infeasible across fragmented toolkits. Using it, we find that observation scaffolding is more decisive for training success than the choice of RL algorithm, with captions and game rules determining whether learning succeeds at all. Cross-domain transfer experiments further show that training on diverse task categories generalizes broadly while narrow training can cause negative transfer, with multi-turn interaction amplifying all of these effects. Gym-V is released as a convenient foundation for training environments and evaluation toolkits, aiming to accelerate future research on agentic VLMs. △ Less

Submitted 8 April, 2026; v1 submitted 16 March, 2026; originally announced March 2026.

In-Context Reinforcement Learning for Tool Use in Large Language Models

Authors: Yaoqi Ye, Yiran Zhao, Keyu Duan, Zeyu Zheng, Kenji Kawaguchi, Cihang Xie, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: While large language models (LLMs) exhibit strong reasoning abilities, their performance on complex tasks is often constrained by the limitations of their internal knowledge. A compelling approach to overcome this challenge is to augment these models with external tools -- such as Python interpreters for mathematical computations or search engines for retrieving factual information. However, enabl… ▽ More While large language models (LLMs) exhibit strong reasoning abilities, their performance on complex tasks is often constrained by the limitations of their internal knowledge. A compelling approach to overcome this challenge is to augment these models with external tools -- such as Python interpreters for mathematical computations or search engines for retrieving factual information. However, enabling models to use these tools effectively remains a significant challenge. Existing methods typically rely on cold-start pipelines that begin with supervised fine-tuning (SFT), followed by reinforcement learning (RL). These approaches often require substantial amounts of labeled data for SFT, which is expensive to annotate or synthesize. In this work, we propose In-Context Reinforcement Learning (ICRL), an RL-only framework that eliminates the need for SFT by leveraging few-shot prompting during the rollout stage of RL. Specifically, ICRL introduces in-context examples within the rollout prompts to teach the model how to invoke external tools. Furthermore, as training progresses, the number of in-context examples is gradually reduced, eventually reaching a zero-shot setting where the model learns to call tools independently. We conduct extensive experiments across a range of reasoning and tool-use benchmarks. Results show that ICRL achieves state-of-the-art performance, demonstrating its effectiveness as a scalable, data-efficient alternative to traditional SFT-based pipelines. △ Less

Submitted 9 March, 2026; originally announced March 2026.

ImageEdit-R1: Boosting Multi-Agent Image Editing via Reinforcement Learning

Authors: Yiran Zhao, Yaoqi Ye, Xiang Liu, Michael Qizhe Shieh, Trung Bui

Abstract: With the rapid advancement of commercial multi-modal models, image editing has garnered significant attention due to its widespread applicability in daily life. Despite impressive progress, existing image editing systems, particularly closed-source or proprietary models, often struggle with complex, indirect, or multi-step user instructions. These limitations hinder their ability to perform nuance… ▽ More With the rapid advancement of commercial multi-modal models, image editing has garnered significant attention due to its widespread applicability in daily life. Despite impressive progress, existing image editing systems, particularly closed-source or proprietary models, often struggle with complex, indirect, or multi-step user instructions. These limitations hinder their ability to perform nuanced, context-aware edits that align with human intent. In this work, we propose ImageEdit-R1, a multi-agent framework for intelligent image editing that leverages reinforcement learning to coordinate high-level decision-making across a set of specialized, pretrained vision-language and generative agents. Each agent is responsible for distinct capabilities--such as understanding user intent, identifying regions of interest, selecting appropriate editing actions, and synthesizing visual content--while reinforcement learning governs their collaboration to ensure coherent and goal-directed behavior. Unlike existing approaches that rely on monolithic models or hand-crafted pipelines, our method treats image editing as a sequential decision-making problem, enabling dynamic and context-aware editing strategies. Experimental results demonstrate that ImageEdit-R1 consistently outperforms both individual closed-source diffusion models and alternative multi-agent framework baselines across multiple image editing datasets. △ Less

Submitted 9 March, 2026; originally announced March 2026.

LongRLVR: Long-Context Reinforcement Learning Requires Verifiable Context Rewards

Authors: Guanzheng Chen, Michael Qizhe Shieh, Lidong Bing

Abstract: Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has significantly advanced the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) by optimizing them against factual outcomes. However, this paradigm falters in long-context scenarios, as its reliance on internal parametric knowledge is ill-suited for tasks requiring contextual grounding--the ability to find and reason over externally provi… ▽ More Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has significantly advanced the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) by optimizing them against factual outcomes. However, this paradigm falters in long-context scenarios, as its reliance on internal parametric knowledge is ill-suited for tasks requiring contextual grounding--the ability to find and reason over externally provided information. We identify a key reason for this failure: a reward based solely on the final answer is too sparse to effectively guide the model for identifying relevant evidence. We formally prove that the outcome-only reward leads to significant vanishing gradients for the context grounding process, rendering learning intractable. To overcome this bottleneck, we introduce LongRLVR to augment the sparse answer reward with a dense and verifiable context reward. This auxiliary signal directly incentivizes the model for selecting the correct grounding information, providing a robust learning gradient that solves the underlying optimization challenge. We validate our method on challenging long-context benchmarks using Qwen and LLaMA models. LongRLVR consistently and significantly outperforms the standard RLVR across all models and benchmarks, e.g., boosting a 14B model's scores on RULER-QA from 73.17 to 88.90 and on LongBench v2 from 39.8 to 46.5. Our work demonstrates that explicitly rewarding the grounding process is a critical and effective strategy for unlocking the full reasoning potential of LLMs in long-context applications. Our code is available at https://github.com/real-absolute-AI/LongRLVR. △ Less

Submitted 2 March, 2026; originally announced March 2026.

Comments: ICLR 2026

Gradually Compacting Large Language Models for Reasoning Like a Boiling Frog

Authors: Yiran Zhao, Shengyang Zhou, Zijian Wu, Tongyan Hu, Yuhui Xu, Rengan Dou, Kenji Kawaguchi, Shafiq Joty, Junnan Li, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive reasoning capabilities, but their substantial size often demands significant computational resources. To reduce resource consumption and accelerate inference, it is essential to eliminate redundant parameters without compromising performance. However, conventional pruning methods that directly remove such parameters often lead to a dramatic… ▽ More Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive reasoning capabilities, but their substantial size often demands significant computational resources. To reduce resource consumption and accelerate inference, it is essential to eliminate redundant parameters without compromising performance. However, conventional pruning methods that directly remove such parameters often lead to a dramatic drop in model performance in reasoning tasks, and require extensive post-training to recover the lost capabilities. In this work, we propose a gradual compacting method that divides the compression process into multiple fine-grained iterations, applying a Prune-Tune Loop (PTL) at each stage to incrementally reduce model size while restoring performance with finetuning. This iterative approach-reminiscent of the "boiling frog" effect-enables the model to be progressively compressed without abrupt performance loss. Experimental results show that PTL can compress LLMs to nearly half their original size with only lightweight post-training, while maintaining performance comparable to the original model on reasoning tasks. Moreover, PTL is flexible and can be applied to various pruning strategies, such as neuron pruning and layer pruning, as well as different post-training methods, including continual pre-training and reinforcement learning. Additionally, experimental results confirm the effectiveness of PTL on a variety of tasks beyond mathematical reasoning, such as code generation, demonstrating its broad applicability. △ Less

Submitted 4 February, 2026; originally announced February 2026.

Diffusion Language Models are Super Data Learners

Authors: Jinjie Ni, Qian Liu, Longxu Dou, Chao Du, Zili Wang, Hang Yan, Tianyu Pang, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: Under strictly controlled pre-training settings, we observe a Crossover: when unique data is limited, diffusion language models (DLMs) consistently surpass autoregressive (AR) models by training for more epochs. The crossover shifts later with more or higher-quality data, earlier with larger models, and persists across dense and sparse architectures. We attribute the gains to three compounding fac… ▽ More Under strictly controlled pre-training settings, we observe a Crossover: when unique data is limited, diffusion language models (DLMs) consistently surpass autoregressive (AR) models by training for more epochs. The crossover shifts later with more or higher-quality data, earlier with larger models, and persists across dense and sparse architectures. We attribute the gains to three compounding factors: (1) any-order modeling, (2) super-dense compute from iterative bidirectional denoising, and (3) built-in Monte Carlo augmentation; input or parameter noise improves AR under data constraint but cannot close the gap. At scale, a 1.7B DLM trained with a ~1.5T-token compute budget on 10B unique Python tokens overtakes an AR coder trained with strictly matched settings. In addition, a 1B-parameter DLM achieves > 56% accuracy on HellaSwag and > 33% on MMLU using only 1B tokens, without any special tricks, just by repeating standard pre-training data. We also show that rising validation cross-entropy does not imply degraded downstream performance in this regime. △ Less

Submitted 5 November, 2025; originally announced November 2025.

ThinkMorph: Emergent Properties in Multimodal Interleaved Chain-of-Thought Reasoning

Authors: Jiawei Gu, Yunzhuo Hao, Huichen Will Wang, Linjie Li, Michael Qizhe Shieh, Yejin Choi, Ranjay Krishna, Yu Cheng

Abstract: Multimodal reasoning requires iterative coordination between language and vision, yet it remains unclear what constitutes a meaningful interleaved chain of thought. We posit that text and image thoughts should function as complementary rather than isomorphic modalities that mutually advance reasoning. Guided by this principle, we build ThinkMorph, a unified model fine-tuned on approximately 24K hi… ▽ More Multimodal reasoning requires iterative coordination between language and vision, yet it remains unclear what constitutes a meaningful interleaved chain of thought. We posit that text and image thoughts should function as complementary rather than isomorphic modalities that mutually advance reasoning. Guided by this principle, we build ThinkMorph, a unified model fine-tuned on approximately 24K high-quality interleaved reasoning traces spanning tasks with varying visual engagement. ThinkMorph learns to generate progressive text-image reasoning steps that concretely manipulate visual content while maintaining coherent verbal logic. It delivers large gains on vision-centric benchmarks (averaging 34.7 percent over the base model) and generalizes to out-of-domain tasks, matching or surpassing larger and proprietary VLMs. Beyond performance, ThinkMorph exhibits emergent multimodal intelligence, including unseen visual manipulation skills, adaptive switching between reasoning modes, and better test-time scaling through diversified multimodal thoughts. These findings suggest promising directions for characterizing the emergent capabilities of unified models for multimodal reasoning. △ Less

Submitted 28 February, 2026; v1 submitted 30 October, 2025; originally announced October 2025.

Comments: project page: https://thinkmorph.github.io/

Training Optimal Large Diffusion Language Models

Authors: Jinjie Ni, Qian Liu, Chao Du, Longxu Dou, Hang Yan, Zili Wang, Tianyu Pang, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: We introduce Quokka, the first systematic scaling law for diffusion language models (DLMs), encompassing both compute-constrained and data-constrained regimes, and studying the key modeling and optimization designs. Quokka is a good friend of Chinchilla and provides wider scopes. We hope the results would bring short-term practical guidance in DLMs training and long-term inspirations for the whole… ▽ More We introduce Quokka, the first systematic scaling law for diffusion language models (DLMs), encompassing both compute-constrained and data-constrained regimes, and studying the key modeling and optimization designs. Quokka is a good friend of Chinchilla and provides wider scopes. We hope the results would bring short-term practical guidance in DLMs training and long-term inspirations for the whole AI community. △ Less

Submitted 5 November, 2025; v1 submitted 28 September, 2025; originally announced October 2025.

MCPMark: A Benchmark for Stress-Testing Realistic and Comprehensive MCP Use

Authors: Zijian Wu, Xiangyan Liu, Xinyuan Zhang, Lingjun Chen, Fanqing Meng, Lingxiao Du, Yiran Zhao, Fanshi Zhang, Yaoqi Ye, Jiawei Wang, Zirui Wang, Jinjie Ni, Yufan Yang, Arvin Xu, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: MCP standardizes how LLMs interact with external systems, forming the foundation for general agents. However, existing MCP benchmarks remain narrow in scope: they focus on read-heavy tasks or tasks with limited interaction depth, and fail to capture the complexity and realism of real-world workflows. To address this gap, we propose MCPMark, a benchmark designed to evaluate MCP use in a more realis… ▽ More MCP standardizes how LLMs interact with external systems, forming the foundation for general agents. However, existing MCP benchmarks remain narrow in scope: they focus on read-heavy tasks or tasks with limited interaction depth, and fail to capture the complexity and realism of real-world workflows. To address this gap, we propose MCPMark, a benchmark designed to evaluate MCP use in a more realistic and comprehensive manner. It consists of $127$ high-quality tasks collaboratively created by domain experts and AI agents. Each task begins with a curated initial state and includes a programmatic script for automatic verification. These tasks demand richer and more diverse interactions with the environment, involving a broad range of create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations. We conduct a comprehensive evaluation of cutting-edge LLMs using a minimal agent framework that operates in a tool-calling loop. Empirical results show that the best-performing model, gpt-5-medium, reaches only $52.56$\% pass@1 and $33.86$\% pass^4, while other widely regarded strong models, including claude-sonnet-4 and o3, fall below $30$\% pass@1 and $15$\% pass^4. On average, LLMs require $16.2$ execution turns and $17.4$ tool calls per task, significantly surpassing those in previous MCP benchmarks and highlighting the stress-testing nature of MCPMark. △ Less

Submitted 28 September, 2025; originally announced September 2025.

Comments: 42 pages, 27 figures, 10 tables

The Emergence of Abstract Thought in Large Language Models Beyond Any Language

Authors: Yuxin Chen, Yiran Zhao, Yang Zhang, An Zhang, Kenji Kawaguchi, Shafiq Joty, Junnan Li, Tat-Seng Chua, Michael Qizhe Shieh, Wenxuan Zhang

Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) continue to advance, their capacity to function effectively across a diverse range of languages has shown marked improvement. Preliminary studies observe that the hidden activations of LLMs often resemble English, even when responding to non-English prompts. This has led to the widespread assumption that LLMs may "think" in English. However, more recent results show… ▽ More As large language models (LLMs) continue to advance, their capacity to function effectively across a diverse range of languages has shown marked improvement. Preliminary studies observe that the hidden activations of LLMs often resemble English, even when responding to non-English prompts. This has led to the widespread assumption that LLMs may "think" in English. However, more recent results showing strong multilingual performance, even surpassing English performance on specific tasks in other languages, challenge this view. In this work, we find that LLMs progressively develop a core language-agnostic parameter space-a remarkably small subset of parameters whose deactivation results in significant performance degradation across all languages. This compact yet critical set of parameters underlies the model's ability to generalize beyond individual languages, supporting the emergence of abstract thought that is not tied to any specific linguistic system. Specifically, we identify language-related neurons-those are consistently activated during the processing of particular languages, and categorize them as either shared (active across multiple languages) or exclusive (specific to one). As LLMs undergo continued development over time, we observe a marked increase in both the proportion and functional importance of shared neurons, while exclusive neurons progressively diminish in influence. These shared neurons constitute the backbone of the core language-agnostic parameter space, supporting the emergence of abstract thought. Motivated by these insights, we propose neuron-specific training strategies tailored to LLMs' language-agnostic levels at different development stages. Experiments across diverse LLM families support our approach. △ Less

Submitted 11 June, 2025; originally announced June 2025.

SynthRL: Scaling Visual Reasoning with Verifiable Data Synthesis

Authors: Zijian Wu, Jinjie Ni, Xiangyan Liu, Zichen Liu, Hang Yan, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: Vision-language models (VLMs) trained via reinforcement learning with verifiable reward (RLVR) have shown notable progress in scaling test-time compute effectively. In this work, we investigate how synthesized RL data can further improve RLVR. To this end, we propose \textbf{SynthRL}-a scalable and guaranteed pipeline for automatic data scaling in reasoning-oriented RL training. SynthRL comprises… ▽ More Vision-language models (VLMs) trained via reinforcement learning with verifiable reward (RLVR) have shown notable progress in scaling test-time compute effectively. In this work, we investigate how synthesized RL data can further improve RLVR. To this end, we propose \textbf{SynthRL}-a scalable and guaranteed pipeline for automatic data scaling in reasoning-oriented RL training. SynthRL comprises three key stages: (1) selecting seed questions with appropriate distribution, (2) augmenting them into more challenging variants while preserving the original answers, and (3) a guaranteed verification stage that ensures near-perfect correctness and difficulty enhancement. Our empirical experiments demonstrate SynthRL's scalability and effectiveness. When applied to the MMK12 dataset, SynthRL synthesizes over 3.3K additional verifiable, challenging questions from approximately 8K seed samples. Models trained with our synthesized data achieve consistent gains across five out-of-domain visual math reasoning benchmarks, with a significant improvement over baseline models trained on seed data alone. Notably, detailed analysis reveals that the gains are more pronounced on the most challenging evaluation samples, highlighting SynthRL's effectiveness in eliciting deeper and more complex reasoning patterns. △ Less

Submitted 2 June, 2025; originally announced June 2025.

NoisyRollout: Reinforcing Visual Reasoning with Data Augmentation

Authors: Xiangyan Liu, Jinjie Ni, Zijian Wu, Chao Du, Longxu Dou, Haonan Wang, Tianyu Pang, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: Recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL) have strengthened the reasoning capabilities of vision-language models (VLMs). However, enhancing policy exploration to better scale test-time compute remains largely underexplored. In addition, VLMs continue to struggle with imperfect visual perception, which in turn affects the subsequent reasoning process. We introduce NoisyRollout, a simple yet ef… ▽ More Recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL) have strengthened the reasoning capabilities of vision-language models (VLMs). However, enhancing policy exploration to better scale test-time compute remains largely underexplored. In addition, VLMs continue to struggle with imperfect visual perception, which in turn affects the subsequent reasoning process. We introduce NoisyRollout, a simple yet effective data augmentation method that addresses these issues by mixing training trajectories from both clean and moderately distorted images. This approach injects perceptual diversity, encouraging better policy exploration and leading to more robust reasoning. A noise annealing schedule gradually reduces distortion strength, aiding exploration early in training while ensuring later stability. Crucially, our method is easy-to-adopt--requiring no additional training cost and no modifications to the RL objective. Extensive experiments on 2 distinct training datasets demonstrate that NoisyRollout achieves state-of-the-art performance among open-source RL-tuned models across 5 out-of-domain reasoning and perception benchmarks. Furthermore, we validate the effectiveness of NoisyRollout across model sizes (7B and 32B), data scales (from 1K to 6K) and image augmentation types (Gaussion noise and rotation), highlighting its generalizability and scalability. △ Less

Submitted 31 October, 2025; v1 submitted 17 April, 2025; originally announced April 2025.

Comments: NeurIPS 2025

Efficient Process Reward Model Training via Active Learning

Authors: Keyu Duan, Zichen Liu, Xin Mao, Tianyu Pang, Changyu Chen, Qiguang Chen, Michael Qizhe Shieh, Longxu Dou

Abstract: Process Reward Models (PRMs) provide step-level supervision to large language models (LLMs), but scaling up training data annotation remains challenging for both humans and LLMs. To address this limitation, we propose an active learning approach, ActPRM, which proactively selects the most uncertain samples for training, substantially reducing labeling costs. During training, we use the PRM to esti… ▽ More Process Reward Models (PRMs) provide step-level supervision to large language models (LLMs), but scaling up training data annotation remains challenging for both humans and LLMs. To address this limitation, we propose an active learning approach, ActPRM, which proactively selects the most uncertain samples for training, substantially reducing labeling costs. During training, we use the PRM to estimate uncertainty after the forward pass, retaining only highly uncertain data. A capable yet costly reasoning model then labels this data. Then we compute the loss with respect to the labels and update the PRM's weights. We compare ActPRM vs. vanilla fine-tuning, on a pool-based active learning setting, demonstrating that ActPRM reduces 50% annotation, but achieving the comparable or even better performance. Beyond annotation efficiency, we further advance the actively trained PRM by filtering over 1M+ math reasoning trajectories with ActPRM, retaining 60% of the data. A subsequent training on this selected dataset yields a new state-of-the-art (SOTA) PRM on ProcessBench (75.0%) and PRMBench (65.5%) compared with same sized models. △ Less

Submitted 14 April, 2025; originally announced April 2025.

Comments: 15 pages, 4 figures

Improving Autoregressive Image Generation through Coarse-to-Fine Token Prediction

Authors: Ziyao Guo, Kaipeng Zhang, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: Autoregressive models have shown remarkable success in image generation by adapting sequential prediction techniques from language modeling. However, applying these approaches to images requires discretizing continuous pixel data through vector quantization methods like VQ-VAE. To alleviate the quantization errors that existed in VQ-VAE, recent works tend to use larger codebooks. However, this wil… ▽ More Autoregressive models have shown remarkable success in image generation by adapting sequential prediction techniques from language modeling. However, applying these approaches to images requires discretizing continuous pixel data through vector quantization methods like VQ-VAE. To alleviate the quantization errors that existed in VQ-VAE, recent works tend to use larger codebooks. However, this will accordingly expand vocabulary size, complicating the autoregressive modeling task. This paper aims to find a way to enjoy the benefits of large codebooks without making autoregressive modeling more difficult. Through empirical investigation, we discover that tokens with similar codeword representations produce similar effects on the final generated image, revealing significant redundancy in large codebooks. Based on this insight, we propose to predict tokens from coarse to fine (CTF), realized by assigning the same coarse label for similar tokens. Our framework consists of two stages: (1) an autoregressive model that sequentially predicts coarse labels for each token in the sequence, and (2) an auxiliary model that simultaneously predicts fine-grained labels for all tokens conditioned on their coarse labels. Experiments on ImageNet demonstrate our method's superior performance, achieving an average improvement of 59 points in Inception Score compared to baselines. Notably, despite adding an inference step, our approach achieves faster sampling speeds. △ Less

Submitted 20 March, 2025; originally announced March 2025.

Comments: Work in progress

Unnatural Languages Are Not Bugs but Features for LLMs

Authors: Keyu Duan, Yiran Zhao, Zhili Feng, Jinjie Ni, Tianyu Pang, Qian Liu, Tianle Cai, Longxu Dou, Kenji Kawaguchi, Anirudh Goyal, J. Zico Kolter, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have been observed to process non-human-readable text sequences, such as jailbreak prompts, often viewed as a bug for aligned LLMs. In this work, we present a systematic investigation challenging this perception, demonstrating that unnatural languages - strings that appear incomprehensible to humans but maintain semantic meanings for LLMs - contain latent features usab… ▽ More Large Language Models (LLMs) have been observed to process non-human-readable text sequences, such as jailbreak prompts, often viewed as a bug for aligned LLMs. In this work, we present a systematic investigation challenging this perception, demonstrating that unnatural languages - strings that appear incomprehensible to humans but maintain semantic meanings for LLMs - contain latent features usable by models. Notably, unnatural languages possess latent features that can be generalized across different models and tasks during inference. Furthermore, models fine-tuned on unnatural versions of instruction datasets perform on-par with those trained on natural language, achieving 49.71 win rates in Length-controlled AlpacaEval 2.0 in average across various base models. In addition, through comprehensive analysis, we demonstrate that LLMs process unnatural languages by filtering noise and inferring contextual meaning from filtered words. △ Less

Submitted 3 June, 2025; v1 submitted 2 March, 2025; originally announced March 2025.

RAPID: Long-Context Inference with Retrieval-Augmented Speculative Decoding

Authors: Guanzheng Chen, Qilong Feng, Jinjie Ni, Xin Li, Michael Qizhe Shieh

Abstract: The emergence of long-context large language models (LLMs) offers a promising alternative to traditional retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for processing extensive documents. However, the computational overhead of long-context inference presents significant efficiency challenges. While Speculative Decoding (SD) traditionally accelerates inference using smaller draft models, its effectiveness di… ▽ More The emergence of long-context large language models (LLMs) offers a promising alternative to traditional retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for processing extensive documents. However, the computational overhead of long-context inference presents significant efficiency challenges. While Speculative Decoding (SD) traditionally accelerates inference using smaller draft models, its effectiveness diminishes substantially in long-context scenarios due to memory-bound KV cache operations. We introduce Retrieval-Augmented Speculative Decoding (RAPID), which leverages RAG for both accelerating and enhancing generation quality in long-context inference. RAPID introduces the RAG drafter-a draft LLM operating on shortened retrieval contexts-to speculate on the generation of long-context target LLMs. Our approach enables a new paradigm where same-scale or even larger LLMs can serve as RAG drafters while maintaining computational efficiency. To fully leverage the potentially superior capabilities from stronger RAG drafters, we develop an inference-time knowledge transfer that enriches the target distribution by RAG. Extensive experiments on the LLaMA-3.1 and Qwen2.5 backbones demonstrate that RAPID effectively integrates the strengths of both RAG and long-context LLMs, achieving significant performance improvements (e.g., from 39.33 to 42.83 on InfiniteBench for LLaMA-3.1-8B) with more than 2x speedups for long-context inference. Our analyses also reveal the robustness of RAPID across various context lengths and retrieval quality. △ Less

Submitted 22 June, 2025; v1 submitted 27 February, 2025; originally announced February 2025.

Comments: ICML 2025 Spotlight

LongPO: Long Context Self-Evolution of Large Language Models through Short-to-Long Preference Optimization

Authors: Guanzheng Chen, Xin Li, Michael Qizhe Shieh, Lidong Bing

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities through pretraining and alignment. However, superior short-context LLMs may underperform in long-context scenarios due to insufficient long-context alignment. This alignment process remains challenging due to the impracticality of human annotation for extended contexts and the difficulty in balancing short- and long-context per… ▽ More Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities through pretraining and alignment. However, superior short-context LLMs may underperform in long-context scenarios due to insufficient long-context alignment. This alignment process remains challenging due to the impracticality of human annotation for extended contexts and the difficulty in balancing short- and long-context performance. To address these challenges, we introduce LongPO, that enables short-context LLMs to self-evolve to excel on long-context tasks by internally transferring short-context capabilities. LongPO harnesses LLMs to learn from self-generated short-to-long preference data, comprising paired responses generated for identical instructions with long-context inputs and their compressed short-context counterparts, respectively. This preference reveals capabilities and potentials of LLMs cultivated during short-context alignment that may be diminished in under-aligned long-context scenarios. Additionally, LongPO incorporates a short-to-long KL constraint to mitigate short-context performance decline during long-context alignment. When applied to Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 from 128K to 512K context lengths, LongPO fully retains short-context performance and largely outperforms naive SFT and DPO in both long- and short-context tasks. Specifically, LongPO-trained models can achieve results on long-context benchmarks comparable to, or even surpassing, those of superior LLMs (e.g., GPT-4-128K) that involve extensive long-context annotation and larger parameter scales. Our code is available at https://github.com/DAMO-NLP-SG/LongPO. △ Less

Submitted 1 March, 2025; v1 submitted 19 February, 2025; originally announced February 2025.

Comments: ICLR 2025