GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
How to Compare Things Properly? A Study of Argument Relevance in Comparative Question Answering
Authors: Irina Nikishina; Saba Anwar; Nikolay Dolgov; Maria Manina; Daria Ignatenko; Artem Shelmanov; Chris Biemann
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Comparative Question Answering (CQA) lies at the intersection of Question Answering, Argument Mining, and Summarization. It poses unique challenges due to the inherently subjective nature of many questions and the need to integrate diverse perspectives. Although the CQA task can be addressed using recently emerged instruction-following Large Language Models (LLMs), challenges such as hallucinations in their outputs and the lack of transparent argument provenance remain significant limitations.To address these challenges, we construct a manually curated dataset comprising arguments annotated with their relevance. These arguments are further used to answer comparative questions, enabling precise traceability and faithfulness. Furthermore, we define explicit criteria for an “ideal” comparison and introduce a benchmark for evaluating the outputs of various Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) models with respect to argument relevance. All code and data are publicly released to support further research.
FinanceReasoning: Benchmarking Financial Numerical Reasoning More Credible, Comprehensive and Challenging
Authors: Zichen Tang; Haihong E; Ziyan Ma; Haoyang He; Jiacheng Liu; Zhongjun Yang; Zihua Rong; Rongjin Li; Kun Ji; Qing Huang; Xinyang Hu; Yang Liu; Qianhe Zheng
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: We introduce **FinanceReasoning**, a novel benchmark designed to evaluate the reasoning capabilities of large reasoning models (LRMs) in financial numerical reasoning problems. Compared to existing benchmarks, our work provides three key advancements. (1) **Credibility**: We update 15.6% of the questions from four public datasets, annotating 908 new questions with detailed Python solutions and rigorously refining evaluation standards. This enables an accurate assessment of the reasoning improvements of LRMs. (2) **Comprehensiveness**: FinanceReasoning covers 67.8% of financial concepts and formulas, significantly surpassing existing datasets. Additionally, we construct 3,133 Python-formatted functions, which enhances LRMs’ financial reasoning capabilities through refined knowledge (*e.g.*, 83.2% → 91.6% for GPT-4o). (3) **Challenge**: Models are required to apply multiple financial formulas for precise numerical reasoning on 238 *Hard* problems. The best-performing model (*i.e.*, OpenAI o1 with PoT) achieves 89.1% accuracy, yet LRMs still face challenges in numerical precision. We demonstrate that combining Reasoner and Programmer models can effectively enhance LRMs’ performance (*e.g.*, 83.2% → 87.8% for DeepSeek-R1). Our work paves the way for future research on evaluating and improving LRMs in domain-specific complex reasoning tasks.
Controllable Style Arithmetic with Language Models
Authors: Weiqi Wang; Wengang Zhou; Zongmeng Zhang; Jie Zhao; Houqiang Li
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Language models have shown remarkable capabilities in text generation, but precisely controlling their linguistic style remains challenging. Existing methods either lack fine-grained control, require extensive computation, or introduce significant latency. We propose Style Arithmetic (SA), a novel parameter-space approach that first extracts style-specific representations by analyzing parameter differences between models trained on contrasting styles, then incorporates these representations into a base model with precise control over style intensity. Our experiments show that SA achieves three key capabilities: controllability for precise adjustment of styles, transferability for effective style transfer across tasks, and composability for simultaneous control of multiple style dimensions. Compared to alternative methods, SA offers superior effectiveness while achieving optimal computational efficiency. Our approach opens new possibilities for flexible and efficient style control in language models.
Masks Can be Learned as an Alternative to Experts
Authors: Peiyu Liu; Tianwen Wei; Bo Zhu; Wayne Xin Zhao; Shuicheng Yan
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: In this work, we investigate how to sparsify a pre-trained dense large language model into a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture for faster inference. Our approach applies mask matrix to the activations for each expert, constrained by L0 regularization to minimize the number of activated parameters. Starting with all parameters active, the model is progressively sparsified during training, ensuring minimal performance loss. This approach proves more efficient than one-shot sparsification techniques, which typically require significant resources for performance recovery. Moreover, our approach automatically identifies shared, token-specific, and inactive experts, allowing for more efficient allocation of computational resources. Through extensive experiments, we achieve up to 97% performance retention on downstream tasks with only 50% of the feed-forward parameters activated in dense models. Beyond enhancing inference efficiency, this strategy of sharing computational units among experts presents a valuable framework for designing more generalized and efficient MoE architectures, opening avenues for future advancements in expert-based models.
Program Synthesis Benchmark for Visual Programming in XLogoOnline Environment
Authors: Chao Wen; Jacqueline Staub; Adish Singla
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Large language and multimodal models have shown remarkable success on various benchmarks focused on specific skills such as general-purpose programming, math word problem-solving, and visual question answering. However, it is unclear how well these models perform on tasks that require a combination of these skills. In this paper, we curate a novel program synthesis benchmark based on the real-world tasks in the XLogoOnline visual programming environment. Each task requires a combination of different skills such as spatial planning, basic programming, and logical reasoning. Our evaluation shows that current state-of-the-art models like GPT-4V and Llama3-70B struggle to solve these tasks, achieving only 20% and 2.35% success rates, respectively. Next, we develop a fine-tuning pipeline to boost the performance of models by leveraging a large-scale synthetic training dataset with over 80,000 tasks. Moreover, we showcase how emulator-driven feedback can be used to design a curriculum over training data distribution, through which a fine-tuned Llama3-8B drastically outperforms GPT-4V and Llama3-70B models. Finally, we provide an in-depth failure analysis to understand the limitations of different models. We will publicly release the benchmark for future research on program synthesis in visual programming.
Removal of Hallucination on Hallucination: Debate-Augmented RAG
Authors: Wentao Hu; Wengyu Zhang; Yiyang Jiang; Chen Jason Zhang; Xiaoyong Wei; Li Qing
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enhances factual accuracy by integrating external knowledge, yet it introduces a critical issue: erroneous or biased retrieval can mislead generation, compounding hallucinations, a phenomenon we term Hallucination on Hallucination. To address this, we propose Debate-Augmented RAG (DRAG), a training-free framework that integrates Multi-Agent Debate (MAD) mechanisms into both retrieval and generation stages. In retrieval, DRAG employs structured debates among proponents, opponents, and judges to refine retrieval quality and ensure factual reliability. In generation, DRAG introduces asymmetric information roles and adversarial debates, enhancing reasoning robustness and mitigating factual inconsistencies. Evaluations across multiple tasks demonstrate that DRAG improves retrieval reliability, reduces RAG-induced hallucinations, and significantly enhances overall factual accuracy. Our code is available at https://github.com/Huenao/Debate-Augmented-RAG.
CodeDPO: Aligning Code Models with Self Generated and Verified Source Code
Authors: Kechi Zhang; Ge Li; Yihong Dong; Jingjing Xu; Jun Zhang; Jing Su; Yongfei Liu; Zhi Jin
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Code generation models have shown significant potential for programming tasks. However, existing training methods like supervised fine-tuning face key limitations: they do not effectively teach models to prioritize correct over incorrect solutions in ambiguous situations, nor do they effectively optimize the runtime efficiency of the generated code. To address these challenges, we propose CodeDPO, a framework that integrates preference learning into code generation to improve two key code preference factors: code correctness and efficiency. CodeDPO employs a novel dataset construction method, utilizing a self-generation-and-validation mechanism that simultaneously generates and evaluates code and test cases. The underlying assumption is that test cases executable by multiple code snippets provide more reliable validation, and code that passes more tests is more likely to be correct. Through this self-validation process, our PageRank-inspired algorithm iteratively updates the ranking score of each code snippet, ultimately creating a code preference optimization dataset based on correctness and efficiency. CodeDPO is flexible and scalable, generating diverse preference optimization data without depending on powerful models such as GPT-4. Through comprehensive evaluations of five widely used benchmarks, CodeDPO demonstrates significant improvements in correctness and efficiency compared to existing methods. Our experiments prove that CodeDPO enhances the capabilities of LLMs in code generation and provides a robust foundation for conducting code preference optimization in more complex and challenging real-world scenarios.
ProxAnn: Use-Oriented Evaluations of Topic Models and Document Clustering
Authors: Alexander Hoyle; Lorena Calvo-Bartolomé; Jordan Boyd-Graber; Philip Resnik
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Topic models and document-clustering evaluations either use automated metrics that align poorly with human preferences, or require expert labels that are intractable to scale. We design a scalable human evaluation protocol and a corresponding automated approximation that reflect practitioners’ real-world usage of models. Annotators—or an LLM-based proxy—review text items assigned to a topic or cluster, infer a category for the group, then apply that category to other documents. Using this protocol, we collect extensive crowdworker annotations of outputs from a diverse set of topic models on two datasets. We then use these annotations to validate automated proxies, finding that the best LLM proxy is statistically indistinguishable from a human annotator and can therefore serve as a reasonable substitute in automated evaluations.
BOOKWORLD: From Novels to Interactive Agent Societies for Story Creation
Authors: Yiting Ran; Xintao Wang; Tian Qiu; Jiaqing Liang; Yanghua Xiao; Deqing Yang
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have enabled social simulation through multi-agent systems. Prior efforts focus on agent societies created from scratch, assigning agents with newly defined personas. However, simulating established fictional worlds and characters remain largely underexplored, despite its significant practical value. In this paper, we introduce BookWorld, a comprehensive system for constructing and simulating book-based multi-agent societies. BookWorld’s design covers comprehensive real-world intricacies, including diverse and dynamic characters, fictional worldviews, geographical constraints and changes, e.t.c. BookWorld enables diverse applications including story generation, interactive games and social simulation, offering novel ways to extend and explore beloved fictional works. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that BookWorld generates creative, high-quality stories while maintaining fidelity to the source books, surpassing previous methods with a win rate of 75.36%. The code and demo of this paper can be found at the project page: https://bookworld2025.github.io/.
Quantifying Lexical Semantic Shift via Unbalanced Optimal Transport
Authors: Ryo Kishino; Hiroaki Yamagiwa; Ryo Nagata; Sho Yokoi; Hidetoshi Shimodaira
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Lexical semantic change detection aims to identify shifts in word meanings over time. While existing methods using embeddings from a diachronic corpus pair estimate the degree of change for target words, they offer limited insight into changes at the level of individual usage instances. To address this, we apply Unbalanced Optimal Transport (UOT) to sets of contextualized word embeddings, capturing semantic change through the excess and deficit in the alignment between usage instances. In particular, we propose Sense Usage Shift (SUS), a measure that quantifies changes in the usage frequency of a word sense at each usage instance. By leveraging SUS, we demonstrate that several challenges in semantic change detection can be addressed in a unified manner, including quantifying instance-level semantic change and word-level tasks such as measuring the magnitude of semantic change and the broadening or narrowing of meaning.
Agentic Reward Modeling: Integrating Human Preferences with Verifiable Correctness Signals for Reliable Reward Systems
Authors: Hao Peng; Yunjia Qi; Xiaozhi Wang; Zijun Yao; Bin Xu; Lei Hou; Juanzi Li
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Reward models (RMs) are crucial for the training and inference-time scaling up of large language models (LLMs). However, existing reward models primarily focus on human preferences, neglecting verifiable correctness signals which have shown strong potential in training LLMs. In this paper, we propose agentic reward modeling, a reward system that combines reward models with verifiable correctness signals from different aspects to provide reliable rewards. We empirically implement a reward agent, named RewardAgent, that combines human preference rewards with two verifiable signals: factuality and instruction following, to provide more reliable rewards. We conduct comprehensive experiments on existing reward model benchmarks and inference-time best-of-n searches on real-world downstream tasks. RewardAgent significantly outperforms vanilla reward models, demonstrating its effectiveness. We further construct training preference pairs using RewardAgent and train an LLM with the DPO objective, achieving superior performance on various NLP benchmarks compared to conventional reward models. Our codes are publicly released to facilitate further research.
Adaptive and Robust Translation from Natural Language to Multi-model Query Languages
Authors: Gengyuan Shi; Chaokun Wang; Liu Yabin; Jiawei Ren
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Multi-model databases and polystore systems are increasingly studied for managing multi-model data holistically. As their primary interface, multi-model query languages (MMQLs) often exhibit complex grammars, highlighting the need for effective Text-to-MMQL translation methods. Despite advances in natural language translation, no effective solutions for Text-to-MMQL exist. To address this gap, we formally define the Text-to-MMQL task and present the first Text-to-MMQL dataset involving three representative MMQLs. We propose an adaptive Text-to-MMQL framework that includes both a schema embedding module for capturing multi-model schema information and an MMQL representation strategy to generate concise intermediate query formats with error correction in generated queries. Experimental results show that the proposed framework achieves over a 9% accuracy improvement over our adapted baseline methods.
SAKE: Steering Activations for Knowledge Editing
Authors: Marco Scialanga; Thibault Laugel; Vincent Grari; Marcin Detyniecki
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: As Large Langue Models have been shown to memorize real-world facts, the need to update this knowledge in a controlled and efficient manner arises. Designed with these constraints in mind, Knowledge Editing (KE) approaches propose to alter specific facts in pretrained models. However, they have been shown to suffer from several limitations, including their lack of contextual robustness and their failure to generalize to logical implications related to the fact. To overcome these issues, we propose SAKE, a steering activation method that models a fact to be edited as a distribution rather than a single prompt. Leveraging Optimal Transport, SAKE alters the LLM behavior over a whole fact-related distribution, defined as paraphrases and logical implications. Several numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of this method: SAKE is thus able to perform more robust edits than its existing counterparts.
Middle-Layer Representation Alignment for Cross-Lingual Transfer in Fine-Tuned LLMs
Authors: Danni Liu; Jan Niehues
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: While large language models demonstrate remarkable capabilities at task-specific applications through fine-tuning, extending these benefits across diverse languages is essential for broad accessibility. However, effective cross-lingual transfer is hindered by LLM performance gaps across languages and the scarcity of fine-tuning data in many languages. Through analysis of LLM internal representations from over 1,000+ language pairs, we discover that middle layers exhibit the strongest potential for cross-lingual alignment. Building on this finding, we propose a middle-layer alignment objective integrated into task-specific training. Our experiments on slot filling, machine translation, and structured text generation show consistent improvements in cross-lingual transfer, especially to lower-resource languages. The method is robust to the choice of alignment languages and generalizes to languages unseen during alignment. Furthermore, we show that separately trained alignment modules can be merged with existing task-specific modules, improving cross-lingual capabilities without full re-training. The code is provided in the supplementary materials.
Can External Validation Tools Improve Annotation Quality for LLM-as-a-Judge?
Authors: Arduin Findeis; Floris Weers; Guoli Yin; Ke Ye; Ruoming Pang; Tom Gunter
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Pairwise preferences over model responses are widely collected to evaluate and provide feedback to large language models (LLMs). Given two alternative model responses to the same input, a human or AI annotator selects the “better” response. This approach can provide feedback for domains where other hard-coded metrics are difficult to obtain (e.g., chat response quality), thereby helping model evaluation or training. However, for some domains high-quality pairwise comparisons can be tricky to obtain - from AI and humans. For example, for responses with many factual statements, annotators may disproportionately weigh writing quality rather than underlying facts. In this work, we explore augmenting standard AI annotator systems with additional tools to improve performance on three challenging response domains: long-form factual, math and code tasks. We propose a tool-using agentic system to provide higher quality feedback on these domains. Our system uses web-search and code execution to ground itself based on external validation, independent of the LLM’s internal knowledge and biases. We provide extensive experimental results evaluating our method across the three targeted response domains as well as general annotation tasks, using RewardBench (incl. AlpacaEval and LLMBar), RewardMath, as well as three new datasets for domains with saturated pre-existing datasets. Our results indicate that external tools can indeed improve performance in many, but not all, cases. More generally, our experiments highlight the sensitivity of performance to simple parameters (e.g., prompt) and the need for improved (non-saturated) annotator benchmarks. We share our code at https://github.com/apple/ml-agent-evaluator.
One for All: Update Parameterized Knowledge Across Multiple Models with Once Edit
Authors: Weitao Ma; Xiyuan Du; Xiaocheng Feng; Lei Huang; Yichong Huang; Huiyi Zhang; Xiaoliang Yang; Baohang Li; Xiachong Feng; Ting Liu; Bing Qin
Venue: ACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) encode vast world knowledge but struggle to stay up-to-date, often leading to errors and hallucinations. Knowledge editing offers an efficient alternative to retraining, enabling targeted modifications by updating specific model parameters. However, existing methods primarily focus on individual models, posing challenges in efficiently updating multiple models and adapting to new models. To address this, we propose OnceEdit, a novel ensemble-based approach that employs a plug-in model as the editing module, enabling stable knowledge updates across multiple models. Building on the model ensemble, OnceEdit introduces two key mechanisms to enhance its effectiveness. First, we introduce a dynamic weight mechanism through a weight token for distinguishing between edit-related and non-edit-related instances, ensuring the appropriate utilization of knowledge from integrated models. Second, we incorporate an ensemble enhancement mechanism to mitigate the excessive reliance on the central model inherent in the model ensemble technique, making it more suitable for knowledge editing. Extensive experiments on diverse LLMs demonstrate that OnceEdit consistently outperforms existing methods while achieving superior editing efficiency. Further analysis confirms its adaptability and stability in multi-model editing scenarios.