pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
VME: A Satellite Imagery Dataset and Benchmark for Detecting Vehicles in the Middle East and Beyond
Authors: Noora Al-Emadi, Ingmar Weber, Yin Yang, Ferda Ofli
Date: 2025-05-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Disaster Response, Diversity, Object Detection, Object Detection In Aerial Images, Small Object Detection, vehicle detection

Detecting vehicles in satellite images is crucial for traffic management, urban planning, and disaster response. However, current models struggle with real-world diversity, particularly across different regions. This challenge is amplified by geographic bias in existing datasets, which often focus on specific areas and overlook regions like the Middle East. To address this gap, we present the Vehicles in the Middle East (VME) dataset, designed explicitly for vehicle detection in high-resolution satellite images from Middle Eastern countries. Sourced from Maxar, the VME dataset spans 54 cities across 12 countries, comprising over 4,000 image tiles and more than 100,000 vehicles, annotated using both manual and semi-automated methods. Additionally, we introduce the largest benchmark dataset for Car Detection in Satellite Imagery (CDSI), combining images from multiple sources to enhance global car detection. Our experiments demonstrate that models trained on existing datasets perform poorly on Middle Eastern images, while the VME dataset significantly improves detection accuracy in this region. Moreover, state-of-the-art models trained on CDSI achieve substantial improvements in global car detection.
GeoLLaVA-8K: Scaling Remote-Sensing Multimodal Large Language Models to 8K Resolution
Authors: Fengxiang Wang, Mingshuo Chen, Yueying Li, Di Wang, Haotian Wang, Zonghao Guo, Zefan Wang, Boqi Shan, Long Lan, Yulin Wang, Hongzhen Wang, Wenjing Yang, Bo Du, Jing Zhang
Date: 2025-05-27 00:00:00
Tasks: 8k, Avg, Earth Observation, Large Language Model, Multimodal Large Language Model, Visual Question Answering (VQA)

Ultra-high-resolution (UHR) remote sensing (RS) imagery offers valuable data for Earth observation but pose challenges for existing multimodal foundation models due to two key bottlenecks: (1) limited availability of UHR training data, and (2) token explosion caused by the large image size. To address data scarcity, we introduce SuperRS-VQA (avg. 8,376$\times$8,376) and HighRS-VQA (avg. 2,000$\times$1,912), the highest-resolution vision-language datasets in RS to date, covering 22 real-world dialogue tasks. To mitigate token explosion, our pilot studies reveal significant redundancy in RS images: crucial information is concentrated in a small subset of object-centric tokens, while pruning background tokens (e.g., ocean or forest) can even improve performance. Motivated by these findings, we propose two strategies: Background Token Pruning and Anchored Token Selection, to reduce the memory footprint while preserving key semantics.Integrating these techniques, we introduce GeoLLaVA-8K, the first RS-focused multimodal large language model capable of handling inputs up to 8K$\times$8K resolution, built on the LLaVA framework. Trained on SuperRS-VQA and HighRS-VQA, GeoLLaVA-8K sets a new state-of-the-art on the XLRS-Bench.
BOFormer: Learning to Solve Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimization via Non-Markovian RL
Authors: Yu-Heng Hung, Kai-Jie Lin, Yu-Heng Lin, Chien-YiWang, Cheng Sun, Ping-Chun Hsieh
Date: 2025-05-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Bayesian Optimization, Hyperparameter Optimization, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Q-Learning

Bayesian optimization (BO) offers an efficient pipeline for optimizing black-box functions with the help of a Gaussian process prior and an acquisition function (AF). Recently, in the context of single-objective BO, learning-based AFs witnessed promising empirical results given its favorable non-myopic nature. Despite this, the direct extension of these approaches to multi-objective Bayesian optimization (MOBO) suffer from the \textit{hypervolume identifiability issue}, which results from the non-Markovian nature of MOBO problems. To tackle this, inspired by the non-Markovian RL literature and the success of Transformers in language modeling, we present a generalized deep Q-learning framework and propose \textit{BOFormer}, which substantiates this framework for MOBO via sequence modeling. Through extensive evaluation, we demonstrate that BOFormer constantly outperforms the benchmark rule-based and learning-based algorithms in various synthetic MOBO and real-world multi-objective hyperparameter optimization problems. We have made the source code publicly available to encourage further research in this direction.
LoKI: Low-damage Knowledge Implanting of Large Language Models
Authors: Runyu Wang, Peng Ping, Zhengyu Guo, Xiaoye Zhang, Quan Shi, Liting Zhou, Tianbo Ji
Date: 2025-05-28 00:00:00
Tasks: parameter-efficient fine-tuning

Fine-tuning adapts pretrained models for specific tasks but poses the risk of catastrophic forgetting (CF), where critical knowledge from pre-training is overwritten. Current Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) methods for Large Language Models (LLMs), while efficient, often sacrifice general capabilities. To address the issue of CF in a general-purpose PEFT framework, we propose \textbf{Lo}w-damage \textbf{K}nowledge \textbf{I}mplanting (\textbf{LoKI}), a PEFT technique that is based on a mechanistic understanding of how knowledge is stored in transformer architectures. In two real-world scenarios, LoKI demonstrates task-specific performance that is comparable to or even surpasses that of full fine-tuning and LoRA-based methods across various model types, while significantly better preserving general capabilities. Our work connects mechanistic insights into LLM knowledge storage with practical fine-tuning objectives, achieving state-of-the-art trade-offs between task specialization and the preservation of general capabilities. Our implementation is publicly available as ready-to-use code\footnote{https://github.com/Nexround/LoKI}.
Shapley Value-driven Data Pruning for Recommender Systems
Authors: Yansen Zhang, Xiaokun Zhang, Ziqiang Cui, Chen Ma
Date: 2025-05-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Denoising, Recommendation Systems

Recommender systems often suffer from noisy interactions like accidental clicks or popularity bias. Existing denoising methods typically identify users' intent in their interactions, and filter out noisy interactions that deviate from the assumed intent. However, they ignore that interactions deemed noisy could still aid model training, while some ``clean'' interactions offer little learning value. To bridge this gap, we propose Shapley Value-driven Valuation (SVV), a framework that evaluates interactions based on their objective impact on model training rather than subjective intent assumptions. In SVV, a real-time Shapley value estimation method is devised to quantify each interaction's value based on its contribution to reducing training loss. Afterward, SVV highlights the interactions with high values while downplaying low ones to achieve effective data pruning for recommender systems. In addition, we develop a simulated noise protocol to examine the performance of various denoising approaches systematically. Experiments on four real-world datasets show that SVV outperforms existing denoising methods in both accuracy and robustness. Further analysis also demonstrates that our SVV can preserve training-critical interactions and offer interpretable noise assessment. This work shifts denoising from heuristic filtering to principled, model-driven interaction valuation.
Decision Information Meets Large Language Models: The Future of Explainable Operations Research
Authors: Yansen Zhang, Qingcan Kang, Wing Yin Yu, Hailei Gong, Xiaojin Fu, Xiongwei Han, Tao Zhong, Chen Ma
Date: 2025-02-14 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

Operations Research (OR) is vital for decision-making in many industries. While recent OR methods have seen significant improvements in automation and efficiency through integrating Large Language Models (LLMs), they still struggle to produce meaningful explanations. This lack of clarity raises concerns about transparency and trustworthiness in OR applications. To address these challenges, we propose a comprehensive framework, Explainable Operations Research (EOR), emphasizing actionable and understandable explanations accompanying optimization. The core of EOR is the concept of Decision Information, which emerges from what-if analysis and focuses on evaluating the impact of complex constraints (or parameters) changes on decision-making. Specifically, we utilize bipartite graphs to quantify the changes in the OR model and adopt LLMs to improve the explanation capabilities. Additionally, we introduce the first industrial benchmark to rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of explanations and analyses in OR, establishing a new standard for transparency and clarity in the field.
One RL to See Them All: Visual Triple Unified Reinforcement Learning
Authors: Yan Ma, Linge Du, Xuyang Shen, Shaoxiang Chen, Pengfei Li, Qibing Ren, Lizhuang Ma, Yuchao Dai, PengFei Liu, Junjie Yan
Date: 2025-05-23 00:00:00
Tasks: All, Math, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Reinforcement Learning (RL), Visual Reasoning

Reinforcement learning (RL) has significantly advanced the reasoning capabilities of vision-language models (VLMs). However, the use of RL beyond reasoning tasks remains largely unexplored, especially for perceptionintensive tasks like object detection and grounding. We propose V-Triune, a Visual Triple Unified Reinforcement Learning system that enables VLMs to jointly learn visual reasoning and perception tasks within a single training pipeline. V-Triune comprises triple complementary components: Sample-Level Data Formatting (to unify diverse task inputs), Verifier-Level Reward Computation (to deliver custom rewards via specialized verifiers) , and Source-Level Metric Monitoring (to diagnose problems at the data-source level). We further introduce a novel Dynamic IoU reward, which provides adaptive, progressive, and definite feedback for perception tasks handled by V-Triune. Our approach is instantiated within off-the-shelf RL training framework using open-source 7B and 32B backbone models. The resulting model, dubbed Orsta (One RL to See Them All), demonstrates consistent improvements across both reasoning and perception tasks. This broad capability is significantly shaped by its training on a diverse dataset, constructed around four representative visual reasoning tasks (Math, Puzzle, Chart, and Science) and four visual perception tasks (Grounding, Detection, Counting, and OCR). Subsequently, Orsta achieves substantial gains on MEGA-Bench Core, with improvements ranging from +2.1 to an impressive +14.1 across its various 7B and 32B model variants, with performance benefits extending to a wide range of downstream tasks. These results highlight the effectiveness and scalability of our unified RL approach for VLMs. The V-Triune system, along with the Orsta models, is publicly available at https://github.com/MiniMax-AI.
EFIM: Efficient Serving of LLMs for Infilling Tasks with Improved KV Cache Reuse
Authors: Tianyu Guo, Hande Dong, Yichong Leng, Feng Liu, Cheater Lin, Nong Xiao, Xianwei Zhang
Date: 2025-05-28 00:00:00

Large language models (LLMs) are often used for infilling tasks, which involve predicting or generating missing information in a given text. These tasks typically require multiple interactions with similar context. To reduce the computation of repeated historical tokens, cross-request key-value (KV) cache reuse, a technique that stores and reuses intermediate computations, has become a crucial method in multi-round interactive services. However, in infilling tasks, the KV cache reuse is often hindered by the structure of the prompt format, which typically consists of a prefix and suffix relative to the insertion point. Specifically, the KV cache of the prefix or suffix part is frequently invalidated as the other part (suffix or prefix) is incrementally generated. To address the issue, we propose EFIM, a transformed prompt format of FIM to unleash the performance potential of KV cache reuse. Although the transformed prompt can solve the inefficiency, it exposes subtoken generation problems in current LLMs, where they have difficulty generating partial words accurately. Therefore, we introduce a fragment tokenization training method which splits text into multiple fragments before tokenization during data processing. Experiments on two representative LLMs show that LLM serving with EFIM can lower the latency by 52% and improve the throughput by 98% while maintaining the original infilling capability.EFIM's source code is publicly available at https://github.com/gty111/EFIM.
Generalized Interpolating Discrete Diffusion
Authors: Dimitri von Rütte, Janis Fluri, Yuhui Ding, Antonio Orvieto, Bernhard Schölkopf, Thomas Hofmann
Date: 2025-03-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling

While state-of-the-art language models achieve impressive results through next-token prediction, they have inherent limitations such as the inability to revise already generated tokens. This has prompted exploration of alternative approaches such as discrete diffusion. However, masked diffusion, which has emerged as a popular choice due to its simplicity and effectiveness, reintroduces this inability to revise words. To overcome this, we generalize masked diffusion and derive the theoretical backbone of a family of general interpolating discrete diffusion (GIDD) processes offering greater flexibility in the design of the noising processes. Leveraging a novel diffusion ELBO, we achieve compute-matched state-of-the-art performance in diffusion language modeling. Exploiting GIDD's flexibility, we explore a hybrid approach combining masking and uniform noise, leading to improved sample quality and unlocking the ability for the model to correct its own mistakes, an area where autoregressive models notoriously have struggled. Our code and models are open-source: https://github.com/dvruette/gidd/
Fairness-guided Few-shot Prompting for Large Language Models
Authors: Huan Ma, Changqing Zhang, Yatao Bian, Lemao Liu, Zhirui Zhang, Peilin Zhao, Shu Zhang, Huazhu Fu, QinGhua Hu, Bingzhe Wu
Date: 2023-03-23 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2023 11
Tasks: Fairness, In-Context Learning

Large language models have demonstrated surprising ability to perform in-context learning, i.e., these models can be directly applied to solve numerous downstream tasks by conditioning on a prompt constructed by a few input-output examples. However, prior research has shown that in-context learning can suffer from high instability due to variations in training examples, example order, and prompt formats. Therefore, the construction of an appropriate prompt is essential for improving the performance of in-context learning. In this paper, we revisit this problem from the view of predictive bias. Specifically, we introduce a metric to evaluate the predictive bias of a fixed prompt against labels or a given attributes. Then we empirically show that prompts with higher bias always lead to unsatisfactory predictive quality. Based on this observation, we propose a novel search strategy based on the greedy search to identify the near-optimal prompt for improving the performance of in-context learning. We perform comprehensive experiments with state-of-the-art mainstream models such as GPT-3 on various downstream tasks. Our results indicate that our method can enhance the model's in-context learning performance in an effective and interpretable manner.
Knowledge Graph-extended Retrieval Augmented Generation for Question Answering
Authors: Jasper Linders, Jakub M. Tomczak
Date: 2025-04-11 00:00:00
Tasks: In-Context Learning, Information Retrieval, Knowledge Graphs, Natural Language Understanding, Question Answering, RAG, Retrieval, Retrieval-augmented Generation

Large Language Models (LLMs) and Knowledge Graphs (KGs) offer a promising approach to robust and explainable Question Answering (QA). While LLMs excel at natural language understanding, they suffer from knowledge gaps and hallucinations. KGs provide structured knowledge but lack natural language interaction. Ideally, an AI system should be both robust to missing facts as well as easy to communicate with. This paper proposes such a system that integrates LLMs and KGs without requiring training, ensuring adaptability across different KGs with minimal human effort. The resulting approach can be classified as a specific form of a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) with a KG, thus, it is dubbed Knowledge Graph-extended Retrieval Augmented Generation (KG-RAG). It includes a question decomposition module to enhance multi-hop information retrieval and answer explainability. Using In-Context Learning (ICL) and Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting, it generates explicit reasoning chains processed separately to improve truthfulness. Experiments on the MetaQA benchmark show increased accuracy for multi-hop questions, though with a slight trade-off in single-hop performance compared to LLM with KG baselines. These findings demonstrate KG-RAG's potential to improve transparency in QA by bridging unstructured language understanding with structured knowledge retrieval.
Evaluating Knowledge Graph Based Retrieval Augmented Generation Methods under Knowledge Incompleteness
Authors: Dongzhuoran Zhou, Yuqicheng Zhu, Yuan He, Jiaoyan Chen, Evgeny Kharlamov, Steffen Staab
Date: 2025-04-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Knowledge Graphs, Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model, Question Answering, RAG, Retrieval, Retrieval-augmented Generation

Knowledge Graph based Retrieval-Augmented Generation (KG-RAG) is a technique that enhances Large Language Model (LLM) inference in tasks like Question Answering (QA) by retrieving relevant information from knowledge graphs (KGs). However, real-world KGs are often incomplete, meaning that essential information for answering questions may be missing. Existing benchmarks do not adequately capture the impact of KG incompleteness on KG-RAG performance. In this paper, we systematically evaluate KG-RAG methods under incomplete KGs by removing triples using different methods and analyzing the resulting effects. We demonstrate that KG-RAG methods are sensitive to KG incompleteness, highlighting the need for more robust approaches in realistic settings.
Optimizing Knowledge Integration in Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Self-Selection
Authors: Yan Weng, Fengbin Zhu, Tong Ye, Haoyan Liu, Fuli Feng, Tat-Seng Chua
Date: 2025-02-10 00:00:00
Tasks: Natural Questions, RAG, Retrieval, Retrieval-augmented Generation

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), which integrates external knowledge into Large Language Models (LLMs), has proven effective in enabling LLMs to produce more accurate and reliable responses. However, it remains a significant challenge how to effectively integrate external retrieved knowledge with internal parametric knowledge in LLMs. In this work, we propose a novel Self-Selection RAG framework, where the LLM is made to select from pairwise responses generated with internal parametric knowledge solely and with external retrieved knowledge together to achieve enhanced accuracy. To this end, we devise a Self-Selection-RGP method to enhance the capabilities of the LLM in both generating and selecting the correct answer, by training the LLM with Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) over a curated Retrieval Generation Preference (RGP) dataset. Experimental results with two open-source LLMs (i.e., Llama2-13B-Chat and Mistral-7B) well demonstrate the superiority of our approach over other baseline methods on Natural Questions (NQ) and TrivialQA datasets.
ER-RAG: Enhance RAG with ER-Based Unified Modeling of Heterogeneous Data Sources
Authors: Yikuan Xia, Jiazun Chen, Yirui Zhan, Suifeng Zhao, Weipeng Jiang, Chaorui Zhang, Wei Han, Bo Bai, Jun Gao
Date: 2025-03-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Entity Retrieval, Knowledge Graphs, Question Answering, RAG, Retrieval, Retrieval-augmented Generation

Large language models (LLMs) excel in question-answering (QA) tasks, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) enhances their precision by incorporating external evidence from diverse sources like web pages, databases, and knowledge graphs. However, current RAG methods rely on agent-specific strategies for individual data sources, posing challenges low-resource or black-box environments and complicates operations when evidence is fragmented across sources. To address these limitations, we propose ER-RAG, a framework that unifies evidence integration across heterogeneous data sources using the Entity-Relationship (ER) model. ER-RAG standardizes entity retrieval and relationship querying through ER-based APIs with GET and JOIN operations. It employs a two-stage generation process: first, a preference optimization module selects optimal sources; second, another module constructs API chains based on source schemas. This unified approach allows efficient fine-tuning and seamless integration across diverse data sources. ER-RAG demonstrated its effectiveness by winning all three tracks of the 2024 KDDCup CRAG Challenge, achieving performance on par with commercial RAG pipelines using an 8B LLM backbone. It outperformed hybrid competitors by 3.1% in LLM score and accelerated retrieval by 5.5X.
CAT Pruning: Cluster-Aware Token Pruning For Text-to-Image Diffusion Models
Authors: Xinle Cheng, Zhuoming Chen, Zhihao Jia
Date: 2025-02-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Denoising, Image Generation

Diffusion models have revolutionized generative tasks, especially in the domain of text-to-image synthesis; however, their iterative denoising process demands substantial computational resources. In this paper, we present a novel acceleration strategy that integrates token-level pruning with caching techniques to tackle this computational challenge. By employing noise relative magnitude, we identify significant token changes across denoising iterations. Additionally, we enhance token selection by incorporating spatial clustering and ensuring distributional balance. Our experiments demonstrate reveal a 50%-60% reduction in computational costs while preserving the performance of the model, thereby markedly increasing the efficiency of diffusion models. The code is available at https://github.com/ada-cheng/CAT-Pruning
Importance-Based Token Merging for Efficient Image and Video Generation
Authors: HaoYu Wu, Jingyi Xu, Hieu Le, Dimitris Samaras
Date: 2024-11-23 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Generation, Video Generation

Token merging can effectively accelerate various vision systems by processing groups of similar tokens only once and sharing the results across them. However, existing token grouping methods are often ad hoc and random, disregarding the actual content of the samples. We show that preserving high-information tokens during merging - those essential for semantic fidelity and structural details - significantly improves sample quality, producing finer details and more coherent, realistic generations. Despite being simple and intuitive, this approach remains underexplored. To do so, we propose an importance-based token merging method that prioritizes the most critical tokens in computational resource allocation, leveraging readily available importance scores, such as those from classifier-free guidance in diffusion models. Experiments show that our approach significantly outperforms baseline methods across multiple applications, including text-to-image synthesis, multi-view image generation, and video generation with various model architectures such as Stable Diffusion, Zero123++, AnimateDiff, or PixArt-$\alpha$.