Yufan Cai

Yedi Zhang, Yufan Cai, Xinyue Zuo et al.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as a transformative AI paradigm, profoundly influencing daily life through their exceptional language understanding and contextual generation capabilities. Despite their remarkable performance, LLMs face a critical challenge: the propensity to produce unreliable outputs due to the inherent limitations of their learning-based nature. Formal methods (FMs), on the other hand, are a well-established computation paradigm that provides mathematically rigorous techniques for modeling, specifying, and verifying the correctness of systems. FMs have been extensively applied in mission-critical software engineering, embedded systems, and cybersecurity. However, the primary challenge impeding the deployment of FMs in real-world settings lies in their steep learning curves, the absence of user-friendly interfaces, and issues with efficiency and adaptability. This position paper outlines a roadmap for advancing the next generation of trustworthy AI systems by leveraging the mutual enhancement of LLMs and FMs. First, we illustrate how FMs, including reasoning and certification techniques, can help LLMs generate more reliable and formally certified outputs. Subsequently, we highlight how the advanced learning capabilities and adaptability of LLMs can significantly enhance the usability, efficiency, and scalability of existing FM tools. Finally, we show that unifying these two computation paradigms -- integrating the flexibility and intelligence of LLMs with the rigorous reasoning abilities of FMs -- has transformative potential for the development of trustworthy AI software systems. We acknowledge that this integration has the potential to enhance both the trustworthiness and efficiency of software engineering practices while fostering the development of intelligent FM tools capable of addressing complex yet real-world challenges.

Linze Chen, Yufan Cai, Zhe Hou et al.

Legal decisions should be logical and based on statutory laws. While large language models(LLMs) are good at understanding legal text, they cannot provide verifiable justifications. We present L4L, a solver-centric framework that enforces formal alignment between LLM-based legal reasoning and statutory laws. The framework integrates role-differentiated LLM agents with SMT-backed verification, combining the flexibility of natural language with the rigor of symbolic reasoning. Our approach operates in four stages: (1) Statute Knowledge Building, where LLMs autoformalize legal provisions into logical constraints and validate them through case-level testing; (2) Dual Fact-and-Statute Extraction, in which the prosecutor-and defense-aligned agents independently map case narratives to argument tuples; (3) Solver-Centric Adjudication, where SMT solvers check the legal admissibility and consistency of the arguments against the formalized statute knowledge; (4) Judicial Rendering, in which a judge agent integrates solver-validated reasoning with statutory interpretation and similar precedents to produce a legally grounded verdict. Experiments on public legal benchmarks show that L4L consistently outperforms baselines, while providing auditable justifications that enable trustworthy legal AI.