Dongwon Jung

Dongwon Jung, Qin Liu, Tenghao Huang et al.

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) improves large language models (LMs) by incorporating non-parametric knowledge through evidence retrieved from external sources. However, it often struggles to cope with inconsistent and irrelevant information that can distract the LM from its tasks, especially when multiple evidence pieces are required. While compressing the retrieved evidence with a compression model aims to address this issue, the compressed evidence may still be unfamiliar to the target model used for downstream tasks, potentially failing to utilize the evidence effectively. We propose FaviComp (Familarity-Aware Evidence Compression), a novel training-free evidence compression technique that makes retrieved evidence more familiar to the target model, while seamlessly integrating parametric knowledge from the model. Experimental results show that FaviComp consistently outperforms most recent evidence compression baselines across multiple open-domain QA datasets, improving accuracy by up to 28.1% while achieving high compression rates. Additionally, we demonstrate the effective integration of both parametric and non-parametric knowledge during evidence compression.

Dongwon Jung, Peng Shi, Yi Zhang et al.

Large reasoning models improve performance by generating extended chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning, but this behavior becomes inefficient when applied to LLM agents. Current LLM agents often generate verbose textual reasoning at every decision step and allocate reasoning effort nearly uniformly across turns, leading to substantial inefficiency in multi-turn agentic trajectories. We propose Adaptive Latent Agentic Reasoning (ALAR), a dual-mode framework that uses compact latent reasoning for routine turns and selectively escalates to explicit chain-of-thought when deeper deliberation is needed. ALAR learns latent reasoning by using the agent's actions as supervision anchors and is further optimized to use latent reasoning when it is sufficient for task success and reserve explicit CoT for harder decisions. Experiments on agentic search and tool-use benchmarks show that ALAR maintains comparable or better task accuracy while substantially reducing generated tokens by up to 43.6% in search and 84.6% in tool use. These results demonstrate that ALAR improves the accuracy-efficiency trade-off of LLM agents by reducing unnecessary textual reasoning while preserving explicit deliberation for harder decision steps.

Tenghao Huang, Dongwon Jung, Muhao Chen

Recent advancements in integrating external tools with Large Language Models (LLMs) have opened new frontiers, with applications in mathematical reasoning, code generators, and smart assistants. However, existing methods, relying on simple one-time retrieval strategies, fall short on effectively and accurately shortlisting relevant tools. This paper introduces a novel PLUTO (Planning, Learning, and Understanding for TOols) approach, encompassing `Plan-and-Retrieve (P&R)` and `Edit-and-Ground (E&G)` paradigms. The P&R paradigm consists of a neural retrieval module for shortlisting relevant tools and an LLM-based query planner that decomposes complex queries into actionable tasks, enhancing the effectiveness of tool utilization. The E&G paradigm utilizes LLMs to enrich tool descriptions based on user scenarios, bridging the gap between user queries and tool functionalities. Experiment results demonstrate that these paradigms significantly improve the recall and NDCG in tool retrieval tasks, significantly surpassing current state-of-the-art models.