SESep 15, 2024
RethinkMCTS: Refining Erroneous Thoughts in Monte Carlo Tree Search for Code GenerationQingyao Li, Wei Xia, Kounianhua Du et al.
Tree search methods have demonstrated impressive performance in code generation. Previous methods combine tree search with reflection that summarizes past mistakes to achieve iterative improvement. However, these methods face significant challenges. First, they search directly within the code language space, neglecting the underlying reasoning process critical for effective code generation. Second, reflection-based approaches merely accumulate historical errors in memory without providing correct reasoning pathways, making it difficult for subsequent search iterations to identify optimal solutions, resulting in decreased search quality. In this work, we propose RethinkMCTS, a framework that systematically explores and refines the reasoning process for code generation. Specifically, we employ MCTS to search for thoughts before code generation and integrate MCTS with a refinement mechanism called rethink, which incorporates fine-grained code execution feedback to refine erroneous thoughts during the search. It ensures the search path aligns with better reasoning, improving overall search quality. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that RethinkMCTS outperforms previous search-based and feedback-enhanced code generation baselines.
93.4AIMay 13
MMSkills: Towards Multimodal Skills for General Visual AgentsKangning Zhang, Shuai Shao, Qingyao Li et al.
Reusable skills have become a core substrate for improving agent capabilities, yet most existing skill packages encode reusable behavior primarily as textual prompts, executable code, or learned routines. For visual agents, however, procedural knowledge is inherently multimodal: reuse depends not only on what operation to perform, but also on recognizing the relevant state, interpreting visual evidence of progress or failure, and deciding what to do next. We formalize this requirement as multimodal procedural knowledge and address three practical challenges: (I) what a multimodal skill package should contain; (II) where such packages can be derived from public interaction experience; and (III) how agents can consult multimodal evidence at inference time without excessive image context or over-anchoring to reference screenshots. We introduce MMSkills, a framework for representing, generating, and using reusable multimodal procedures for runtime visual decision making. Each MMSkill is a compact, state-conditioned package that couples a textual procedure with runtime state cards and multi-view keyframes. To construct these packages, we develop an agentic trajectory-to-skill Generator that transforms public non-evaluation trajectories into reusable multimodal skills through workflow grouping, procedure induction, visual grounding, and meta-skill-guided auditing. To use them, we introduce a branch-loaded multimodal skill agent: selected state cards and keyframes are inspected in a temporary branch, aligned with the live environment, and distilled into structured guidance for the main agent. Experiments across GUI and game-based visual-agent benchmarks show that MMSkills consistently improve both frontier and smaller multimodal agents, suggesting that external multimodal procedural knowledge complements model-internal priors.
97.7SEApr 12
AdverMCTS: Combating Pseudo-Correctness in Code Generation via Adversarial Monte Carlo Tree SearchQingyao Li, Weiwen Liu, Weinan Zhang et al.
Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have successfully employed search-based strategies to enhance code generation. However, existing methods typically rely on static, sparse public test cases for verification, leading to pseudo-correctness -- where solutions overfit the visible public tests but fail to generalize to hidden test cases. We argue that optimizing against a fixed, weak environment inherently limits robustness. To address this, we propose AdverMCTS, a novel adversarial Monte Carlo Tree Search framework that combats pseudo-correctness by coupling code search with active vulnerability discovery. AdverMCTS formulates generation as a minimax-style game between a Solver agent, which synthesizes code candidates, and an Attacker agent, which evolves to generate targeted corner test cases that exploit logical divergences in the current code pool. These discovered tests form a dynamic, progressively hostile filter that penalizes fragile reasoning. Extensive experiments demonstrate that AdverMCTS significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, effectively reducing false positive rates and forcing the model to generalize beyond the initial constraints. The resources of this work are available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/AdverMCTS_open-A255.
AIDec 27, 2023
Adapting Large Language Models for Education: Foundational Capabilities, Potentials, and ChallengesQingyao Li, Lingyue Fu, Weiming Zhang et al.
Online education platforms, leveraging the internet to distribute education resources, seek to provide convenient education but often fall short in real-time communication with students. They often struggle to address the diverse obstacles students encounter throughout their learning journey. Solving the problems encountered by students poses a significant challenge for traditional deep learning models, as it requires not only a broad spectrum of subject knowledge but also the ability to understand what constitutes a student's individual difficulties. It's challenging for traditional machine learning models, as they lack the capacity to comprehend students' personalized needs. Recently, the emergence of large language models (LLMs) offers the possibility for resolving this issue by comprehending individual requests. Although LLMs have been successful in various fields, creating an LLM-based education system is still challenging for the wide range of educational skills required. This paper reviews the recently emerged LLM research related to educational capabilities, including mathematics, writing, programming, reasoning, and knowledge-based question answering, with the aim to explore their potential in constructing the next-generation intelligent education system. Specifically, for each capability, we focus on investigating two aspects. Firstly, we examine the current state of LLMs regarding this capability: how advanced they have become, whether they surpass human abilities, and what deficiencies might exist. Secondly, we evaluate whether the development methods for LLMs in this area are generalizable, that is, whether these methods can be applied to construct a comprehensive educational supermodel with strengths across various capabilities, rather than being effective in only a singular aspect.
IRMay 21, 2024
Learning Structure and Knowledge Aware Representation with Large Language Models for Concept RecommendationQingyao Li, Wei Xia, Kounianhua Du et al.
Concept recommendation aims to suggest the next concept for learners to study based on their knowledge states and the human knowledge system. While knowledge states can be predicted using knowledge tracing models, previous approaches have not effectively integrated the human knowledge system into the process of designing these educational models. In the era of rapidly evolving Large Language Models (LLMs), many fields have begun using LLMs to generate and encode text, introducing external knowledge. However, integrating LLMs into concept recommendation presents two urgent challenges: 1) How to construct text for concepts that effectively incorporate the human knowledge system? 2) How to adapt non-smooth, anisotropic text encodings effectively for concept recommendation? In this paper, we propose a novel Structure and Knowledge Aware Representation learning framework for concept Recommendation (SKarREC). We leverage factual knowledge from LLMs as well as the precedence and succession relationships between concepts obtained from the knowledge graph to construct textual representations of concepts. Furthermore, we propose a graph-based adapter to adapt anisotropic text embeddings to the concept recommendation task. This adapter is pre-trained through contrastive learning on the knowledge graph to get a smooth and structure-aware concept representation. Then, it's fine-tuned through the recommendation task, forming a text-to-knowledge-to-recommendation adaptation pipeline, which effectively constructs a structure and knowledge-aware concept representation. Our method does a better job than previous adapters in transforming text encodings for application in concept recommendation. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
AIFeb 15
Plan-MCTS: Plan Exploration for Action Exploitation in Web NavigationWeiming Zhang, Jihong Wang, Jiamu Zhou et al.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have empowered autonomous agents to handle complex web navigation tasks. While recent studies integrate tree search to enhance long-horizon reasoning, applying these algorithms in web navigation faces two critical challenges: sparse valid paths that lead to inefficient exploration, and a noisy context that dilutes accurate state perception. To address this, we introduce Plan-MCTS, a framework that reformulates web navigation by shifting exploration to a semantic Plan Space. By decoupling strategic planning from execution grounding, it transforms sparse action space into a Dense Plan Tree for efficient exploration, and distills noisy contexts into an Abstracted Semantic History for precise state awareness. To ensure efficiency and robustness, Plan-MCTS incorporates a Dual-Gating Reward to strictly validate both physical executability and strategic alignment and Structural Refinement for on-policy repair of failed subplans. Extensive experiments on WebArena demonstrate that Plan-MCTS achieves state-of-the-art performance, surpassing current approaches with higher task effectiveness and search efficiency.
CLMay 21, 2025
NL-Debugging: Exploiting Natural Language as an Intermediate Representation for Code DebuggingWeiming Zhang, Qingyao Li, Xinyi Dai et al.
Debugging is a critical aspect of LLM's coding ability. Early debugging efforts primarily focused on code-level analysis, which often falls short when addressing complex programming errors that require a deeper understanding of algorithmic logic. Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have shifted attention toward leveraging natural language reasoning to enhance code-related tasks. However, two fundamental questions remain unanswered: What type of natural language format is most effective for debugging tasks? And what specific benefits does natural language reasoning bring to the debugging process? In this paper, we introduce NL-DEBUGGING, a novel framework that employs natural language as an intermediate representation to improve code debugging. By debugging at a natural language level, we demonstrate that NL-DEBUGGING outperforms traditional debugging methods and enables a broader modification space through direct refinement guided by execution feedback. Our findings highlight the potential of natural language reasoning to advance automated code debugging and address complex programming challenges.
CLMay 14, 2025
LLM4CD: Leveraging Large Language Models for Open-World Knowledge Augmented Cognitive DiagnosisWeiming Zhang, Lingyue Fu, Qingyao Li et al.
Cognitive diagnosis (CD) plays a crucial role in intelligent education, evaluating students' comprehension of knowledge concepts based on their test histories. However, current CD methods often model students, exercises, and knowledge concepts solely on their ID relationships, neglecting the abundant semantic relationships present within educational data space. Furthermore, contemporary intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) frequently involve the addition of new students and exercises, a situation that ID-based methods find challenging to manage effectively. The advent of large language models (LLMs) offers the potential for overcoming this challenge with open-world knowledge. In this paper, we propose LLM4CD, which Leverages Large Language Models for Open-World Knowledge Augmented Cognitive Diagnosis. Our method utilizes the open-world knowledge of LLMs to construct cognitively expressive textual representations, which are then encoded to introduce rich semantic information into the CD task. Additionally, we propose an innovative bi-level encoder framework that models students' test histories through two levels of encoders: a macro-level cognitive text encoder and a micro-level knowledge state encoder. This approach substitutes traditional ID embeddings with semantic representations, enabling the model to accommodate new students and exercises with open-world knowledge and address the cold-start problem. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method consistently outperforms previous CD models on multiple real-world datasets, validating the effectiveness of leveraging LLMs to introduce rich semantic information into the CD task.
LGDec 3, 2021
I-WKNN: Fast-Speed and High-Accuracy WIFI Positioning for Intelligent StadiumsZhangzhi Zhao, Zhengying Lou, Ruibo Wang et al.
Based on various existing wireless fingerprint location algorithms in intelligent sports venues, a high-precision and fast indoor location algorithm improved weighted k-nearest neighbor (I-WKNN) is proposed. In order to meet the complex environment of sports venues and the demand of high-speed sampling, this paper proposes an AP selection algorithm for offline and online stages. Based on the characteristics of the signal intensity distribution in intelligent venues, an asymmetric Gaussian filter algorithm is proposed. This paper introduces the application of the positioning algorithm in the intelligent stadium system, and completes the data acquisition and real-time positioning of the stadium. Compared with traditional WKNN and KNN algorithms, the I-WKNN algorithm has advantages in fingerprint positioning database processing, environmental noise adaptability, real-time positioning accuracy and positioning speed, etc. The experimental results show that the I-WKNN algorithm has obvious advantages in positioning accuracy and positioning time in a complex noise environment and has obvious application potential in a smart stadium.
CLAug 9, 2021
KGAP: Knowledge Graph Augmented Political Perspective Detection in News MediaShangbin Feng, Zilong Chen, Wenqian Zhang et al.
Identifying political perspectives in news media has become an important task due to the rapid growth of political commentary and the increasingly polarized political ideologies. Previous approaches focus on textual content and leave out the rich social and political context that is essential in the perspective detection process. To address this limitation, we propose KGAP, a political perspective detection method that incorporates external domain knowledge. Specifically, we construct a political knowledge graph to serve as domain-specific external knowledge. We then construct heterogeneous information networks to represent news documents, which jointly model news text and external knowledge. Finally, we adopt relational graph neural networks and conduct political perspective detection as graph-level classification. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method consistently achieves the best performance on two real-world perspective detection benchmarks. Ablation studies further bear out the necessity of external knowledge and the effectiveness of our graph-based approach.