Making LLMs Better Many-to-Many Speech-to-Text Translators with Curriculum LearningYexing Du, Youcheng Pan, Ziyang Ma et al.
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have achieved significant success in Speech-to-Text Translation (S2TT) tasks. While most existing research has focused on English-centric translation directions, the exploration of many-to-many translation is still limited by the scarcity of parallel data. To address this, we propose a three-stage curriculum learning strategy that leverages the machine translation capabilities of large language models and adapts them to S2TT tasks, enabling effective learning in low-resource settings. We trained MLLMs with varying parameter sizes (3B, 7B, and 32B) and evaluated the proposed strategy using the FLEURS and CoVoST-2 datasets. Experimental results show that the proposed strategy achieves state-of-the-art average performance in $15\times14$ language pairs, requiring fewer than 10 hours of speech data per language to achieve competitive results. The source code and models are released at https://github.com/yxduir/LLM-SRT.
Good Learners Think Their Thinking: Generative PRM Makes Large Reasoning Model More Efficient Math LearnerTao He, Rongchuan Mu, Lizi Liao et al.
Large reasoning models (LRMs) have recently shown promise in solving complex math problems when optimized with Reinforcement Learning (RL). But conventional approaches rely on outcome-only rewards that provide sparse feedback, resulting in inefficient optimization process. In this work, we investigate the function of process reward models (PRMs) to accelerate the RL training for LRMs. We propose a novel intrinsic signal-driven generative process evaluation mechanism operating at the thought level to address major bottlenecks in RL-based training. Specifically, instead of requiring PRMs to know how to solve problems, our method uses intrinsic signals in solutions to judge stepwise correctness and aggregate contiguous correct/incorrect steps into coherent 'thought' units. This structured, thought-level rewards enable more reliable credit assignment by reducing ambiguity in step segmentation and alleviating reward hacking. We further introduce a capability-adaptive reward mechanism that dynamically balances exploration and exploitation based on the LRM's current proficiency, guiding learning without stifling creative trial-and-error. These innovations are integrated into a new off-policy RL algorithm, TP-GRPO, which extends grouped proximal optimization with process-based rewards and improves training efficiency. Experiments on 1.5B and 7B parameter LRMs demonstrate that our method achieves higher problem-solving accuracy with significantly fewer training samples than outcome-only reward baselines. The results validate that well-structured process rewards can substantially accelerate LRM optimization in math reasoning tasks. Code is available at https://github.com/cs-holder/tp_grpo.
12.0CLMay 21, 2025Code
When Less Language is More: Language-Reasoning Disentanglement Makes LLMs Better Multilingual ReasonersWeixiang Zhao, Jiahe Guo, Yang Deng et al.
Multilingual reasoning remains a significant challenge for large language models (LLMs), with performance disproportionately favoring high-resource languages. Drawing inspiration from cognitive neuroscience, which suggests that human reasoning functions largely independently of language processing, we hypothesize that LLMs similarly encode reasoning and language as separable components that can be disentangled to enhance multilingual reasoning. To evaluate this, we perform a causal intervention by ablating language-specific representations at inference time. Experiments on 10 open-source LLMs spanning 11 typologically diverse languages show that this language-specific ablation consistently boosts multilingual reasoning performance. Layer-wise analyses further confirm that language and reasoning representations can be effectively decoupled throughout the model, yielding improved multilingual reasoning capabilities, while preserving top-layer language features remains essential for maintaining linguistic fidelity. Compared to post-training such as supervised fine-tuning or reinforcement learning, our training-free ablation achieves comparable or superior results with minimal computational overhead. These findings shed light on the internal mechanisms underlying multilingual reasoning in LLMs and suggest a lightweight and interpretable strategy for improving cross-lingual generalization.
19.2CLFeb 2, 2024
LLMs May Perform MCQA by Selecting the Least Incorrect OptionHaochun Wang, Sendong Zhao, Zewen Qiang et al.
In the field of NLP, Large Language Models (LLMs) have markedly enhanced performance across a variety of tasks. However, the comprehensive evaluation of LLMs remains an inevitable challenge for the community. Recently, the adoption of Multiple Choice Question Answering (MCQA) as a benchmark for assessing LLMs has gained considerable traction. However, concerns regarding the robustness of this evaluative method persist. Building upon previous discussions on the issue of \textit{variability}, we reveal an additional dimension of concern: LLMs may perform MCQA by selecting the least incorrect option rather than distinctly correct. This observation suggests that LLMs might regard multiple options as correct, which could undermine the reliability of MCQA as a metric for evaluating LLMs. To address this challenge, we introduce an enhanced dataset augmentation method for MCQA, termed MCQA+, to provide a more accurate reflection of the model performance, thereby highlighting the necessity for more sophisticated evaluation mechanisms in the assessment of LLM capabilities.
11.5CLJan 29, 2024
Beyond Direct Diagnosis: LLM-based Multi-Specialist Agent Consultation for Automatic DiagnosisHaochun Wang, Sendong Zhao, Zewen Qiang et al.
Automatic diagnosis is a significant application of AI in healthcare, where diagnoses are generated based on the symptom description of patients. Previous works have approached this task directly by modeling the relationship between the normalized symptoms and all possible diseases. However, in the clinical diagnostic process, patients are initially consulted by a general practitioner and, if necessary, referred to specialists in specific domains for a more comprehensive evaluation. The final diagnosis often emerges from a collaborative consultation among medical specialist groups. Recently, large language models have shown impressive capabilities in natural language understanding. In this study, we adopt tuning-free LLM-based agents as medical practitioners and propose the Agent-derived Multi-Specialist Consultation (AMSC) framework to model the diagnosis process in the real world by adaptively fusing probability distributions of agents over potential diseases. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our approach compared with baselines. Notably, our approach requires significantly less parameter updating and training time, enhancing efficiency and practical utility. Furthermore, we delve into a novel perspective on the role of implicit symptoms within the context of automatic diagnosis.
19.9CLFeb 17, 2025
Ontology-Guided Reverse Thinking Makes Large Language Models Stronger on Knowledge Graph Question AnsweringRunxuan Liu, Bei Luo, Jiaqi Li et al.
Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities in natural language processing. However, in knowledge graph question answering tasks (KGQA), there remains the issue of answering questions that require multi-hop reasoning. Existing methods rely on entity vector matching, but the purpose of the question is abstract and difficult to match with specific entities. As a result, it is difficult to establish reasoning paths to the purpose, which leads to information loss and redundancy. To address this issue, inspired by human reverse thinking, we propose Ontology-Guided Reverse Thinking (ORT), a novel framework that constructs reasoning paths from purposes back to conditions. ORT operates in three key phases: (1) using LLM to extract purpose labels and condition labels, (2) constructing label reasoning paths based on the KG ontology, and (3) using the label reasoning paths to guide knowledge retrieval. Experiments on the WebQSP and CWQ datasets show that ORT achieves state-of-the-art performance and significantly enhances the capability of LLMs for KGQA.
Exploring Cross-lingual Latent Transplantation: Mutual Opportunities and Open ChallengesYangfan Ye, Xiaocheng Feng, Xiachong Feng et al.
Current large language models (LLMs) often exhibit imbalances in multilingual capabilities and cultural adaptability, largely attributed to their English-centric pre-training data. In this paper, we introduce and investigate a cross-lingual latent transplantation (XTransplant) framework, which aims to further exploit the model's internalized multilingual knowledge during inference and examine its effects on the multilingual capability and cultural adaptability of LLMs. XTransplant framework enables models to harness the complementary strengths of both English and non-English resources by transplanting latent activations across languages. Through extensive analysis, we empirically demonstrate that XTransplant, a form of cross-lingual interaction, has mutually beneficial effects on the multilingual capability and cultural adaptability of LLMs, particularly for low-resource languages and cultures. We further reveal that attention modules play a pivotal role in supporting multilingual understanding, while feed-forward modules are more adept at capturing culture-specific knowledge. In addition, we conduct in-depth analysis of XTransplant's stability, effectiveness, and generalizability. By probing the upper bound performance of XTransplant, we expose the considerable underutilization of current LLMs' multilingual potential-a challenge that remains open. We hope our analysis offers a new lens for advancing cross-lingual interactions and better leveraging models' internalized multilingual knowledge.
16.6CLJun 28, 2024
BeamAggR: Beam Aggregation Reasoning over Multi-source Knowledge for Multi-hop Question AnsweringZheng Chu, Jingchang Chen, Qianglong Chen et al.
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong reasoning capabilities. Nevertheless, they still suffer from factual errors when tackling knowledge-intensive tasks. Retrieval-augmented reasoning represents a promising approach. However, significant challenges still persist, including inaccurate and insufficient retrieval for complex questions, as well as difficulty in integrating multi-source knowledge. To address this, we propose Beam Aggregation Reasoning, BeamAggR, a reasoning framework for knowledge-intensive multi-hop QA. BeamAggR explores and prioritizes promising answers at each hop of question. Concretely, we parse the complex questions into trees, which include atom and composite questions, followed by bottom-up reasoning. For atomic questions, the LLM conducts reasoning on multi-source knowledge to get answer candidates. For composite questions, the LLM combines beam candidates, explores multiple reasoning paths through probabilistic aggregation, and prioritizes the most promising trajectory. Extensive experiments on four open-domain multi-hop reasoning datasets show that our method significantly outperforms SOTA methods by 8.5%. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that BeamAggR elicits better knowledge collaboration and answer aggregation.