GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
M3UCD: A Multi-task Multimodal Metaphor Understanding Challenge Dataset for LLMs
Authors: Tianlong Zheng; Yating Yang; Rui Dong; Bo Ma; Lei Wang; Xi Zhou; Siru Miao; Turghun Osman
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Understanding multimodal metaphors represents a crucial pathway for machines to comprehend human cognition. However, current research remains constrained by superficial dataset annotations, insufficient systematic evaluation of large language models, and fragmented task frameworks. To bridge these gaps, the paper proposes a systematic solution featuring: (I) We present the largest fine-grained Multi-task Multimodal Metaphor Understanding Challenge Dataset (M3UCD) built via multi-perspective collaborative annotation. It contains 15,345 samples, each annotated with 12 manual attribute labels. (II) Systematic benchmarking of LLMs' capacity boundaries in metaphor understanding. Evaluation results reveal the persistent challenges LLMs face in this domain while validating M3UCD's effectiveness and potential. (III) A concise and unified multi-task baseline framework was developed and demonstrated its effectiveness in enhancing the metaphor understanding capabilities of MLLMs.
Navigating Through Paper Flood: Advancing LLM-Based Paper Evaluation Through Domain-Aware Retrieval and Latent Reasoning
Authors: Wuqiang Zheng; Yiyan Xu; Xinyu Lin; Chongming Gao; Wenjie Wang; Fuli Feng
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: With the rapid and continuous increase in academic publications, identifying high-quality research has become an increasingly pressing challenge. While recent methods leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for automated paper evaluation have shown great promise, they are often constrained by outdated domain knowledge and limited reasoning capabilities. In this work, we present PaperEval, a novel LLM-based framework for automated paper evaluation that addresses these limitations through two key components: 1) a domain-aware paper retrieval module that retrieves relevant concurrent work to support contextualized assessments of novelty and contributions, and 2) a latent reasoning mechanism that enables deep understanding of complex motivations and methodologies, along with comprehensive comparison against concurrently related work, to support more accurate and reliable evaluation. 
To guide the reasoning process, we introduce a progressive ranking optimization strategy that encourages the LLM to iteratively refine its predictions with an emphasis on relative comparison. 
Experiments on two datasets demonstrate that PaperEval consistently outperforms existing methods in both academic impact and paper quality evaluation. In addition, we deploy PaperEval in a real-world paper recommendation system for filtering high-quality papers, which has gained strong engagement on social media---amassing over 8,000 subscribers and attracting over 10,000 views for many filtered high-quality papers---demonstrating the practical effectiveness of PaperEval.
Graph-augmented and Over-smoothing-resistant Contrastive Clustering for Short Text
Authors: Zijian Zheng; Tao Ai; Yonghe Lu
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Short texts present significant challenges for clustering due to semantic sparsity, limited contextual information, and ambiguous category boundaries. While recent studies incorporating contrastive learning and cluster structure optimization have improved performance, their reliance on augmented samples often introduces noise and weakens the capacity of pretrained language models to capture fine-grained semantics. To address these issues, we propose a Graph-augmented and Over-smoothing-resistant Contrastive Clustering framework (GOCC). Specifically, GOCC constructs sentence-level and cluster-level graphs to capture local semantic similarity and global structural patterns, incorporating these signals into sentence representations to enhance representational quality and clustering suitability. Moreover, we introduce a contrastive mechanism based on intermediate layer representations within graph-augmented contrastive learning to alleviate semantic over-smoothing caused by deep networks. Finally, a target-distribution-driven clustering optimization strategy is employed to leverage high-confidence samples in guiding cluster assignments. Experimental results on several benchmark short text datasets demonstrate that GOCC consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of clustering accuracy and normalized mutual information.
Compress-then-Rank: Faster and Better Listwise Reranking with Large Language Models via Ranking-Aware Passage Compression
Authors: Zhewei Zhi; Yingyi Zhang; Yizhen Jing; Xianneng Li; Jianing Liu; Huajie Liu; Yongliang Ding
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Listwise reranking with Large Language Models (LLMs) has emerged as the state-of-the-art approach, consistently establishing new performance benchmarks in passage reranking. However, their practical application faces two critical hurdles: the prohibitive computational overhead and high latency of processing long token sequences, and the performance degradation caused by phenomena like "lost in the middle" in long contexts. To address these challenges, we introduce Compress-then-Rank (C2R), an efficient framework that performs listwise reranking not on original passages, but on their compact multi-vector surrogates. These surrogates can be pre-computed and cached for all passages in the corpus. The effectiveness of C2R hinges on three key innovations. First, the compressor model is pre-trained on a combination of text restoration and continuation objectives, enabling high-fidelity compressed vector sequences that mitigate the semantic loss common in single-vector methods. Second, a novel input scheme prepends embeddings of each ordinal index (e.g., [1]:) to its corresponding compressed vector sequence, which both delineates passage boundaries and guides the reranker LLM  to generate a ranked list. Finally, the compressor and reranker are jointly optimized, making the compression explicitly ranking-aware for the ranking objective. Extensive experiments on major reranking benchmarks demonstrate that C2R provides substantial speedups while achieving competitive and even superior ranking performance compared to full-text reranking methods.
Learning from Guidelines: Structured Prompt Optimization for Expert Annotation Tasks
Authors: Wenliang Zhong; Haiqing Li; Thao M. Dang; Feng Jiang; Hehuan Ma; Yuzhi Guo; Jean Gao; Junzhou Huang
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Deep learning has significantly advanced numerous fields by training on extensive annotated datasets. However, this data-driven paradigm faces limitations such as limited adaptability and high annotation costs, particularly when precise adherence to detailed, domain-specific guidelines is required in annotation. This challenge raises a critical question: Can models effectively shift from data-driven learning to autonomously leveraging guidelines with minimal annotated examples? To address this, we propose the Guideline-Driven Prompt (GDP) optimization framework, which shifts the learning paradigm from data-driven training to guideline-driven reasoning. GDP leverages Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to retrieve essential fragments from complex guidelines and synthesize them into structured, executable prompts. A tree-based optimization algorithm systematically constructs and refines these prompts, explicitly capturing the intricate logic embedded in professional guidelines through a latent pipeline structure. Empirical evaluations on four datasets ranging from diverse domains and different tasks demonstrate that GDP effectively transitions the learning process from data-intensive methods to a guideline-driven approach in tasks requiring detailed and complex guideline adherence, reducing dependence on extensive annotated datasets.
P2S: Probabilistic Process Supervision for General-Domain Reasoning Question Answering
Authors: Wenlin Zhong; Chengyuan Liu; Yiquan Wu; Bovin Tan; Changlong Sun; Yi Wang; Xiaozhong Liu; Kun Kuang
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: While reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has advanced LLM reasoning in structured domains like mathematics and programming, its application to general-domain reasoning tasks remains challenging due to the absence of verifiable reward signals. To this end, methods like Reinforcement Learning with Reference Probability Reward (RLPR) have emerged, leveraging the probability of generating the final answer as a reward signal. However, these outcome-focused approaches neglect crucial step-by-step supervision of the reasoning process itself. To address this gap, we introduce Probabilistic Process Supervision (P2S), a novel self-supervision framework that provides fine-grained process rewards without requiring a separate reward model or human-annotated reasoning steps. During reinforcement learning, P2S synthesizes and filters a high-quality reference reasoning chain (gold-CoT). The core of our method is to calculate a Path Faithfulness Reward (PFR) for each reasoning step, which is derived from the conditional probability of generating the gold-CoT's suffix, given the model's current reasoning prefix. Crucially, this PFR can be flexibly integrated with any outcome-based reward, directly tackling the reward sparsity problem by providing dense guidance. Extensive experiments on reading comprehension and medical Question Answering benchmarks show that P2S significantly outperforms strong baselines.
Lost in Benchmarks? Rethinking Large Language Model Benchmarking with Item Response Theory
Authors: Hongli Zhou; Hui Huang; Ziqing Zhao; Lvyuan Han; Huicheng Wang; Kehai Chen; Muyun Yang; Wei Bao; Jian Dong; Bing Xu; Conghui Zhu; Hailong Cao; Tiejun Zhao
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: The evaluation of large language models (LLMs) via benchmarks is widespread, yet inconsistencies between different leaderboards and poor separability among top models raise concerns about their ability to accurately reflect authentic model capabilities. This paper provides a critical analysis of benchmark effectiveness, examining mainstream prominent LLM benchmarks using results from diverse models. We first propose Pseudo-Siamese Network for Item Response Theory (PSN-IRT), an enhanced Item Response Theory framework that incorporates a rich set of item parameters within an IRT-grounded architecture. PSN-IRT can be utilized for accurate and reliable estimations of item characteristics and model abilities. Based on PSN-IRT, we conduct extensive analysis on 11 LLM benchmarks comprising 41,871 items, revealing significant and varied shortcomings in their measurement quality. Furthermore, we demonstrate that leveraging PSN-IRT is able to construct smaller benchmarks while maintaining stronger alignment with human preference.
HyperGLLM: An Efficient Framework for Endpoint Threat Detection via Hypergraph-Enhanced Large Language Models
Authors: Hongyi Zhou; Jianfeng Pan; Min Peng; Shaomang Huang; Hanzhong Zheng
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) systems are a cornerstone of modern threat detection and endpoint protection. However, conventional heuristic- and learning-based approaches often fail to address sophisticated and continuously evolving attack patterns. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) offer promising capabilities for behavioral analysis in EDR logs, yet their effectiveness is hindered by the high volume of events and the interleaved nature of behavior sequences---posing significant challenges for long-context modeling and stealthy threat detection. To address these issues, we propose HyperGLLM, a novel detection framework that introduces hypergraph reasoning into LLMs. It first constructs an attribute-value level relation-aware graph to model low-order structural semantics while reducing textual redundancy. Then, it introduces a differential hypergraph module with multi-granularity clustering to capture high-order behavioral dependencies embedded in interleaved events and reinforce threat semantics. Finally, the hypergraph representations are aligned with an LLM for efficient contextual reasoning over potential malicious behaviors. To facilitate empirical evaluation, we curate EDR3.6B-63F, a large-scale EDR dataset containing 3.6 billion events across 63 distinct behavior families. Extensive experiments demonstrate that HyperGLLM significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods by reducing the false alarm rate to 1.67%, achieving 94.65% accuracy across 63 behavior families, and improving the modeling efficiency of LLMs on long EDR logs. Our framework and dataset provide a solid foundation for future research and support the development of advanced detection solutions in endpoint security.
LLM Collaborative Filtering: User-Item Graph as New Language
Authors: Huachi Zhou; Yujing Zhang; Hao Chen; Qinggang Zhang; Qijie Shen; Feiran Huang; Xiao Huang
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: In collaborative filtering, learning effective embeddings for users and items from interaction data remains a central challenge. While recent efforts leverage large language models (LLMs) to enhance collaborative filtering, two critical limitations persist: (1) Efficiency: LLM-based inference is significantly slower than traditional embedding-based search; and (2) Topological Modeling: LLMs struggle to capture graph structures, which are essential for modeling multi-order user-item interactions. To address these limitations, we propose New Language Collaborative Filtering (NLCF), a framework that aligns LLMs with collaborative filtering by conceptualizing user-item graphs as new languages. This approach is based on two key insights: (1) LLMs excel at mastering new languages when trained on suitable corpora, and (2) the empirical conditional probability between tokens in corpora converges to the transition probabilities between nodes in graphs. NLCF translates user-item graphs into corpora, where users and items are treated as tokens. These corpora are used to fine-tune LLMs, and the learned representations are aggregated to construct user and item embeddings that encode multi-order interactions. Unlike methods that deploy LLMs for inference, NLCF distills LLM knowledge learned from corpora into compact embeddings, enabling both efficient training and real-time inference. The framework has been deployed on a billion-scale e-commerce platform for several months. Extensive experiments demonstrate that NLCF outperforms traditional graph CF models and LLM-based baselines while achieving significant training and inference efficiency improvement over LLM-based baselines.
DIFFA: Large Language Diffusion Models Can Listen and Understand
Authors: Jiaming Zhou; Hongjie Chen; Shiwan Zhao; Jian Kang; Jie Li; Enzhi Wang; Yujie Guo; Haoqin Sun; Hui Wang; Aobo Kong; Yong Qin; Xuelong Li
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities across textual and multimodal domains. In parallel, large language diffusion models have emerged as a promising alternative to the autoregressive paradigm, offering improved controllability, bidirectional context modeling, and robust generation. However, their application to the audio modality remains underexplored. In this work, we introduce DIFFA, the first diffusion-based large audio-language model designed to perform spoken language understanding. DIFFA integrates a frozen diffusion language model with a lightweight dual-adapter architecture that bridges speech understanding and natural language reasoning. We employ a two-stage training pipeline: first, aligning semantic representations via an ASR objective; then, learning instruction-following abilities through synthetic audio-caption pairs automatically generated by prompting LLMs. Despite being trained on only 960 hours of ASR and 127 hours of synthetic instruction data, DIFFA demonstrates competitive performance on major benchmarks, including MMSU, MMAU, and VoiceBench, outperforming several autoregressive open-source baselines. Our results reveal the potential of large language diffusion models for efficient and scalable audio understanding, opening a new direction for speech-driven AI.
STaR: Sensitive Trajectory Regulation for Unlearning in Large Reasoning Models
Authors: Jingjing Zhou; Gaoxiang Cong; Li Su; Liang Li
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have advanced automated multi-step reasoning, but their ability to generate complex Chain-of-Thought (CoT) trajectories introduces severe privacy risks, as sensitive information may be deeply embedded throughout the reasoning process. Existing Large Language Models (LLMs) unlearning approaches that typically focus on modifying only final answers are insufficient for LRMs, as they fail to remove sensitive content from intermediate steps, leading to persistent privacy leakage and degraded security. To address these challenges, we propose Sensitive Trajectory Regulation (STaR), a parameter-free, inference-time unlearning framework that achieves robust privacy protection throughout the reasoning process. Specifically, we first identify sensitive content via semantic-aware detection. Then, we inject global safety constraints through secure prompt encoder. Next, we perform trajectory-aware suppression to dynamically block sensitive content across the entire reasoning chain. Finally, we apply token-level adaptive filtering to prevent both exact and paraphrased sensitive tokens during generation. Furthermore, to overcome the inadequacies of existing evaluation protocols, we introduce two metrics: Multi-Decoding Consistency Assessment (MCS), which measures the consistency of unlearning across diverse decoding strategies, and Multi-Granularity Membership Inference Attack (MIA) Evaluation, which quantifies privacy protection at both answer and reasoning-chain levels. Experiments on the R-TOFU benchmark demonstrate that STaR achieves comprehensive and stable unlearning with minimal utility loss, setting a new standard for privacy-preserving reasoning in LRMs.
What to Ask Next? Probing the Imaginative Reasoning of LLMs with TurtleSoup Puzzles
Authors: Mengtao Zhou; Sifan Wu; Huan Zhang; Qi Sima; Bang Liu
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: We investigate the capacity of Large Language Models (LLMs) for imaginative reasoning—the proactive construction, testing, and revision of hypotheses in information-sparse environments. Existing benchmarks, often static or focused on social deduction, fail to capture the dynamic, exploratory nature of this reasoning process. To address this gap, we introduce a comprehensive research framework based on the classic "Turtle Soup" game, integrating a benchmark, an agent, and an evaluation protocol.
We present TurtleSoup-Bench, the first large-scale, bilingual, interactive benchmark for imaginative reasoning, comprising 800 turtle soup stories sourced from both the Internet and expert authors. We also propose Mosaic-Agent, a novel agent designed to assess LLMs' performance in this setting. To evaluate reasoning quality, we develop a multi-dimensional protocol measuring logical consistency, detail completion, and conclusion alignment.
Experiments with leading LLMs reveal clear capability limits, common failure patterns, and a significant performance gap compared to humans. Our work offers new insights into LLMs' imaginative reasoning and establishes a foundation for future research on exploratory agent behavior.
IndexTTS2: A Breakthrough in Emotionally Expressive and Duration-Controlled Auto-Regressive Zero-Shot Text-to-Speech
Authors: Siyi Zhou; Yiquan Zhou; Yi He; Xun Zhou; Jinchao Wang; Wei Deng; Jingchen Shu
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Existing autoregressive large-scale text-to-speech (TTS) models have advantages in speech naturalness, but their token-by-token generation mechanism makes it difficult to precisely control the duration of synthesized speech. This becomes a significant limitation in applications requiring strict audio-visual synchronization, such as video dubbing. This paper introduces IndexTTS2, which proposes a novel, general, and autoregressive model-friendly method for speech duration control. The method supports two generation modes: one explicitly specifies the number of generated tokens to precisely control speech duration; the other freely generates speech in an autoregressive manner without specifying the number of tokens, while faithfully reproducing the prosodic features of the input prompt. Furthermore, IndexTTS2 achieves disentanglement between emotional expression and speaker identity, enabling independent control over timbre and emotion. In the zero-shot setting, the model can accurately reconstruct the target timbre (from the timbre prompt) while perfectly reproducing the specified emotional tone (from the style prompt). To enhance speech clarity in highly emotional expressions, we incorporate GPT latent representations and design a novel three-stage training paradigm to improve the stability of the generated speech. Additionally, to lower the barrier for emotional control, we designed a soft instruction mechanism based on text descriptions by fine-tuning Qwen3, effectively guiding the generation of speech with the desired emotional orientation. Finally, experimental results on multiple datasets show that IndexTTS2 outperforms state-of-the-art zero-shot TTS models in terms of word error rate, speaker similarity, and emotional fidelity.
Note2Chat: Improving LLMs for Multi-Turn Clinical History Taking Using Medical Notes
Authors: Yang Zhou; Zhenting Sheng; Mingrui Tan; Yuting Song; Jun Zhou; Yu Heng Kwan; Lian Leng Low; Yang Bai; Yong Liu
Venue: AAAI 2026 (main)

Abstract: Effective clinical history taking is a foundational yet underexplored component of clinical reasoning. While large language models (LLMs) have shown promise on static benchmarks, they often fall short in dynamic, multi-turn diagnostic settings that require iterative questioning and hypothesis refinement. To address this gap, we propose Note2Chat, a note-driven framework that trains LLMs to conduct structured history taking and diagnosis by learning from widely available medical notes. Instead of relying on scarce and sensitive dialogue data, we convert real-world medical notes into high-quality doctor-patient dialogues using a decision tree-guided generation and refinement pipeline. We then propose a three-stage fine-tuning strategy combining supervised learning, simulated data augmentation, and preference learning. Furthermore, we propose a novel single-turn reasoning paradigm that reframes history taking as a sequence of single-turn reasoning problems. This design enhances interpretability and enables local supervision, dynamic adaptation, and greater sample efficiency. Experimental results show that our method substantially improves clinical reasoning, achieving gains of +16.9 F1 and +21.0 Top-1 diagnostic accuracy over GPT-4o.