GenAI4ELab/papercli-papers huggingface dataset:
Layer-Level Self-Exposure and Patch: Affirmative Token Mitigation for Jailbreak Attack Defense
Authors: Yang Ouyang; Hengrui Gu; Shuhang Lin; Wenyue Hua; Jie Peng; Bhavya Kailkhura; Meijun Gao; Tianlong Chen; Kaixiong Zhou
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in diverse applications, including chatbot assistants and code generation, aligning their behavior with safety and ethical standards has become paramount. However, jailbreak attacks, which exploit vulnerabilities to elicit unintended or harmful outputs, threaten LLMs safety significantly. In this paper, we introduce Layer-AdvPatcher, a novel methodology designed to defend against jailbreak attacks by utilizing an unlearning strategy to patch specific layers within LLMs through self-augmented datasets. Our insight is that certain layer(s), tend to produce affirmative tokens when faced with harmful prompts. By identifying these layers and adversarially exposing them to generate more harmful data, one can understand their inherent and diverse vulnerabilities to attacks. With these exposures, we then “unlearn” these issues, reducing the impact of affirmative tokens and hence minimizing jailbreak risks while keeping the model’s responses to safe queries intact.We conduct extensive experiments on two models, four benchmark datasets, and multiple state-of-the-art jailbreak attacks to demonstrate the efficacy of our approach. Results indicate that our framework reduces the harmfulness and attack success rate of jailbreak attacks without compromising utility for benign queries compared to recent defense methods. Our code is publicly available at: https://github.com/oyy2000/LayerAdvPatcher
DeCAP: Context-Adaptive Prompt Generation for Debiasing Zero-shot Question Answering in Large Language Models
Authors: Suyoung Bae; YunSeok Choi; Jee-Hyong Lee
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: While Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in zero-shot Question Answering (QA), they tend to expose biases in their internal knowledge when faced with socially sensitive questions, leading to a degradation in performance. Existing zero-shot methods are efficient but failto consider context and prevent bias propagation in the answers. To address this, we propose *DeCAP*, a method for debiasing LLMs usingContext-Adaptive Prompt Generation. *DeCAP* leverages a *Question Ambiguity Detection* to take appropriate debiasing actions based on the context and a *Neutral Answer Guidance Generation* to suppress the LLMs make objective judgments about the context, minimizing thepropagation of bias from their internal knowledge. Our various experiments across eight LLMs show that *DeCAP* achieves state-of-the-art zero-shot debiased QA performance. This demonstrates *DeCAP*’s efficacy in enhancing the fairness and accuracy of LLMs in diverseQA settings.
Reward-Guided Tree Search for Inference Time Alignment of Large Language Models
Authors: Chia-Yu Hung; Navonil Majumder; Ambuj Mehrish; Soujanya Poria
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Inference-time computation methods enhance the performance of Large Language Models (LLMs) by leveraging additional computational resources to achieve superior results. Common techniques, such as Best-of-N sampling, Majority Voting, and variants of tree-search algorithm have proven to be effective in boosting the performance of LLMs. These approaches strategically trade increased computational resource for improved model responses. In this work, we proposed DARWIN, an inference-time alignment method that leverage the guidance of a reward model to achieve alignment through reward-guided tree search. Empirical evidences indicates that our method outperform other inference-time alignment methods such as Best-of-N and ARGS on two widely accepted alignment benchmarks AlpacaEval 2 and MT-Bench. Furthermore, we show that our inference-time approach achieves performance comparable to preference-tuned models on both benchmarks, highlighting the effectiveness of trading inference-time compute for enhanced performance during inference.
Typographic Attacks in a Multi-Image Setting
Authors: Xiaomeng Wang; Zhengyu Zhao; Martha Larson
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) are susceptible to typographic attacks, which are misclassifications caused by an attack text that is added to an image. In this paper, we introduce a multi-image setting for studying typographic attacks, broadening the current emphasis of the literature on attacking individual images. Specifically, our focus is on attacking image sets without repeating the attack query. Such non-repeating attacks are stealthier, as they are more likely to evade a gatekeeper than attacks that repeat the same attack text. We introduce two attack strategies for the multi-image setting, leveraging the difficulty of the target image, the strength of the attack text, and text-image similarity. Our text-image similarity approach improves attack success rates by 21% over random, non-specific methods on the CLIP model using ImageNet while maintaining stealth in a multi-image scenario. An additional experiment demonstrates transferability, i.e., text-image similarity calculated using CLIP transfers when attacking InstructBLIP.
Tonguescape: Exploring Language Models Understanding of Vowel Articulation
Authors: Haruki Sakajo; Yusuke Sakai; Hidetaka Kamigaito; Taro Watanabe
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Vowels are primarily characterized by tongue position. Humans have discovered these features of vowel articulation through their own experience and explicit objective observation such as using MRI. With this knowledge and our experience, we can explain and understand the relationship between tongue positions and vowels, and this knowledge is helpful for language learners to learn pronunciation. Since language models (LMs) are trained on a large amount of data that includes linguistic and medical fields, our preliminary studies indicate that an LM is able to explain the pronunciation mechanisms of vowels. However, it is unclear whether multi-modal LMs, such as vision LMs, align textual information with visual information. One question arises: do LMs associate real tongue positions with vowel articulation? In this study, we created video and image datasets from the existing real-time MRI dataset and investigated whether LMs can understand vowel articulation based on tongue positions using vision-based information. Our findings suggest that LMs exhibit potential for understanding vowels and tongue positions when reference examples are provided while they have difficulties without them. Our code for dataset building is available on GitHub.
CoRAC: Integrating Selective API Document Retrieval with Question Semantic Intent for Code Question Answering
Authors: YunSeok Choi; CheolWon Na; Jee-Hyong Lee
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Automatic code question answering aims to generate precise answers to questions about code by analyzing code snippets. To provide an appropriate answer, it is necessary to accurately understand the relevant part of the code and correctly interpret the intent of the question. However, in real-world scenarios, the questioner often provides only a portion of the code along with the question, making it challenging to find an answer. The responder should be capable of providing a suitable answer using such limited information. We propose a knowledge-based framework, CoRAC, an automatic code question responder that enhances understanding through selective API document retrieval and question semantic intent clustering. We evaluate our method on three real-world benchmark datasets and demonstrate its effectiveness through various experiments. We also show that our method can generate high-quality answers compared to large language models, such as ChatGPT.
Pipeline Analysis for Developing Instruct LLMs in Low-Resource Languages: A Case Study on Basque
Authors: Ander Corral; Ixak Sarasua Antero; Xabier Saralegi
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are typically optimized for resource-rich languages like English, exacerbating the gap between high-resource and underrepresented languages. This work presents a detailed analysis of strategies for developing a model capable of following instructions in a low-resource language, specifically Basque, by focusing on three key stages: pre-training, instruction tuning, and alignment with human preferences. Our findings demonstrate that continual pre-training with a high-quality Basque corpus of around 600 million words improves natural language understanding (NLU) of the foundational model by over 12 points. Moreover, instruction tuning and human preference alignment using automatically translated datasets proved highly effective, resulting in a 24-point improvement in instruction-following performance. The resulting models, Llama-eus-8B and Llama-eus-8B-instruct, establish a new state-of-the-art for Basque in the sub-10B parameter category.
How to Make LLMs Forget: On Reversing In-Context Knowledge Edits
Authors: Paul Youssef; Zhixue Zhao; Jörg Schlötterer; Christin Seifert
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: In-context knowledge editing (IKE) enables efficient modification of large language model (LLM) outputs without parameter changes and at zero-cost. However, it can be misused to manipulate responses opaquely, e.g., insert misinformation or offensive content. Such malicious interventions could be incorporated into high-level wrapped APIs where the final input prompt is not shown to end-users. To address this issue, we investigate the detection and reversal of IKE-edits. First, we demonstrate that IKE-edits can be detected with high accuracy (F1 > 80%) using only the top-10 output probabilities of the next token, even in a black-box setting, e.g. proprietary LLMs with limited output information. Further, we introduce the novel task of reversing IKE-edits using specially tuned reversal tokens. We explore using both continuous and discrete reversal tokens, achieving over 80% accuracy in recovering original, unedited outputs across multiple LLMs. Our continuous reversal tokens prove particularly effective, with minimal impact on unedited prompts. Through analysis of output distributions, attention patterns, and token rankings, we provide insights into IKE’s effects on LLMs and how reversal tokens mitigate them. This work represents a significant step towards enhancing LLM resilience against potential misuse of in-context editing, improving their transparency and trustworthiness.
PerCul: A Story-Driven Cultural Evaluation of LLMs in Persian
Authors: Erfan Moosavi Monazzah; Vahid Rahimzadeh; Yadollah Yaghoobzadeh; Azadeh Shakery; Mohammad Taher Pilehvar
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Large language models predominantly reflect Western cultures, largely due to the dominance of English-centric training data. This imbalance presents a significant challenge, as LLMs are increasingly used across diverse contexts without adequate evaluation of their cultural competence in non-English languages, including Persian. To address this gap, we introduce PerCul, a carefully constructed dataset designed to assess the sensitivity of LLMs toward Persian culture. PerCul features story-based, multiple-choice questions that capture culturally nuanced scenarios.Unlike existing benchmarks, PerCul is curated with input from native Persian annotators to ensure authenticity and to prevent the use of translation as a shortcut. We evaluate several state-of-the-art multilingual and Persian-specific LLMs, establishing a foundation for future research in cross-cultural NLP evaluation. Our experiments demonstrate a 11.3% gap between best closed source model and layperson baseline while the gap increases to 21.3% by using the best open-weight model. You can access the dataset from here:https://huggingface.co/datasets/teias-ai/percul
Towards Sustainable NLP: Insights from Benchmarking Inference Energy in Large Language Models
Authors: Soham Poddar; Paramita Koley; Janardan Misra; Niloy Ganguly; Saptarshi Ghosh
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly recognized for their exceptional generative capabilities and versatility across various tasks. However, the high inference costs associated with these models have not received adequate attention, particularly when compared to the focus on training costs in existing research. In response to this gap, our study conducts a comprehensive benchmarking of LLM inference energy across a wide range of NLP tasks, where we analyze the impact of different models, tasks, prompts, and system-related factors on inference energy. Specifically, our experiments reveal several interesting insights, including strong correlation of inference energy with output token length and response time. Also, we find that quantization and optimal batch sizes, along with targeted prompt phrases, can significantly reduce energy usage. This study is the first to thoroughly benchmark LLM inference across such a diverse range of aspects, providing insights and offering several recommendations for improving energy efficiency in model deployment.
CSR-Bench: Benchmarking LLM Agents in Deployment of Computer Science Research Repositories
Authors: Yijia Xiao; Runhui Wang; Luyang Kong; Davor Golac; Wei Wang
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: The increasing complexity of computer science research projects demands more effective tools for deploying code repositories. Large Language Models (LLMs), such as Anthropic Claude and Meta Llama, have demonstrated significant advancements across various fields of computer science research, including the automation of diverse software engineering tasks. To evaluate the effectiveness of LLMs in handling complex code development tasks of research projects, particularly for NLP/CV/AI/ML/DM topics, we introduce CSR-Bench, a benchmark for Computer Science Research projects. This benchmark assesses LLMs from various aspects including accuracy, efficiency, and deployment script quality, aiming to explore their potential in conducting computer science research autonomously. We also introduce a novel framework, CSR-Agents, that utilizes multiple LLM agents to automate the deployment of GitHub code repositories of computer science research projects. Specifically, by checking instructions from markdown files and interpreting repository structures, the model generates and iteratively improves bash commands that set up the experimental environments and deploy the code to conduct research tasks. Preliminary results from CSR-Bench indicate that LLM agents can significantly enhance the workflow of repository deployment, thereby boosting developer productivity and improving the management of developmental workflows.
SALAD: Improving Robustness and Generalization through Contrastive Learning with Structure-Aware and LLM-Driven Augmented Data
Authors: Suyoung Bae; YunSeok Choi; Hyojun Kim; Jee-Hyong Lee
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: In various natural language processing (NLP) tasks, fine-tuning Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) often leads to the issue of spurious correlations, which negatively impacts performance, particularly when dealing with out-of-distribution data.To address this problem, we propose **SALAD** (**S**tructure **A**ware and **L**LM-driven **A**ugmented **D**ata), a novel approach designed to enhance model robustness and generalization by generating structure-aware and counterfactually augmented data for contrastive learning.Our method leverages a tagging-based approach to generate structure-aware positive samples and utilizes large language models (LLMs) to generate counterfactual negative samples with diverse sentence patterns. By applying contrastive learning, *SALAD* enables the model to focus on learning the structural relationships between key sentence components while minimizing reliance on spurious correlations.We validate our approach through experiments on three tasks: Sentiment Classification, Sexism Detection, and Natural Language Inference. The results demonstrate that *SALAD* not only improves model robustness and performance across different environments but also enhances generalization to out-of-distribution datasets and cross-domain scenarios.
Rationale-Guided Retrieval Augmented Generation for Medical Question Answering
Authors: Jiwoong Sohn; Yein Park; Chanwoong Yoon; Sihyeon Park; Hyeon Hwang; Mujeen Sung; Hyunjae Kim; Jaewoo Kang
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Large language models (LLM) hold significant potential for applications in biomedicine, but they struggle with hallucinations and outdated knowledge.While retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is generally employed to address these issues, it also has its own set of challenges: (1) LLMs are vulnerable to irrelevant or unhelpful context, (2) medical queries are often not well-targeted for helpful information, and (3) retrievers are prone to bias toward the specific source corpus they were trained on. In this study, we present RAG2 (RAtionale-Guided RAG), a new framework for enhancing the reliability of RAG in biomedical contexts. RAG2 incorporates three key innovations: a small filtering model trained on perplexity-based labels of rationales, which selectively augments informative snippets of documents while filtering out distractors; LLM-generated rationales as queries to improve the utility of retrieved snippets; a structure designed to retrieve snippets evenly from a comprehensive set of four biomedical corpora, effectively mitigating retriever bias. Our experiments demonstrate that RAG2 improves the state-of-the-art LLMs of varying sizes, with improvements of up to 6.1%, and it outperforms the previous best medical RAG model by up to 5.6% across three medical question-answering benchmarks. Our code is available at https://github.com/dmis-lab/RAG2
Prototype Conditioned Generative Replay for Continual Learning in NLP
Authors: Xi Chen; Min Zeng
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers))

Abstract: Generative replay has proven effective in addressing the catastrophic forgetting issue of continual learning (CL) in natural language processing (NLP). However, relying on a single task-specific token or prompt often falls short in generating pseudo-samples that accurately reflect the true data distribution. This leads to issues of semantic inconsistency and scale inconsistency.To tackle these challenges, we propose a Prototype Conditioned Generative Replay (PCGR) method, which enhances generative reply by incorporating task-level statistics through a Prototype Conditioned Variational Autoencoder (PCVAE).Specifically, task-level embedding statistics are stored as prototypes for each old task. When a new task is introduced, PCVAE draws samples from task-specific prototype-based distributions to generate pseudo-samples.By incorporating the prototype, the generated pseudo-samples are both more representative and sufficiently diverse to reflect the real data distribution.Furthermore, as previously stored prototypes may become outdated due to evolving model parameters, we propose a Prototype Shift Estimation (PSE) to adjust for these changes.Experiments on NLP tasks across two different scenarios show that PCGR outperforms previous state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods.
Complete Chess Games Enable LLM Become A Chess Master
Authors: Yinqi Zhang; Xintian Han; Haolong Li; Kedi Chen; Shaohui Lin
Venue: NAACL 2025 (Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 2: Short Papers))

Abstract: Large language models (LLM) have shown remarkable abilities in text generation, question answering, language translation, reasoning and many other tasks. It continues to advance rapidly and is becoming increasingly influential in various fields, from technology and business to education and entertainment. Despite LLM’s success in multiple areas, its ability to play abstract games, such as chess, is underexplored. Chess-playing requires the language models to output legal and reasonable moves from textual inputs. Here, we propose the Large language model ChessLLM to play full chess games. We transform the game into a textual format with the best move represented in the Forsyth-Edwards Notation. We show that by simply supervised fine-tuning, our model has achieved a professional-level Elo rating of 1788 in matches against the standard Elo-rated Stockfish when permitted to sample 10 times. We further show that data quality is important. Long-round data supervision enjoys a 350 Elo rating improvement over short-round data.