Formulas are the language of communication between humans and nature. It is an important research topic of artificial intelligence to find expressions from observed data to reflect the relationship between each variable in the data, which is called a symbolic regression problem. The existing symbolic regression methods directly generate expressions according to the given observation data, and we cannot require the algorithm to generate expressions that meet specific requirements according to the known prior knowledge. For example, the expression needs to contain $\sin$ or be symmetric, and so on. Even if it can, it often requires very complex operations, which is very inconvenient. In this paper, based on multi-modal large language models, we propose MLLM-SR, a conversational symbolic regression method that can generate expressions that meet the requirements simply by describing the requirements with natural language instructions. By experimenting on the Nguyen dataset, we can demonstrate that MLLM-SR leads the state-of-the-art baselines in fitting performance. More notably, we experimentally demonstrate that MLLM-SR can well understand the prior knowledge we add to the natural language instructions. Moreover, the addition of prior knowledge can effectively guide MLLM-SR to generate correct expressions.

Jailbreaking is an emerging adversarial attack that bypasses the safety alignment deployed in off-the-shelf large language models (LLMs) and has evolved into four major categories: optimization-based attacks such as Greedy Coordinate Gradient (GCG), jailbreak template-based attacks such as "Do-Anything-Now", advanced indirect attacks like DrAttack, and multilingual jailbreaks. However, delivering a practical jailbreak defense is challenging because it needs to not only handle all the above jailbreak attacks but also incur negligible delay to user prompts, as well as be compatible with both open-source and closed-source LLMs. Inspired by how the traditional security concept of shadow stacks defends against memory overflow attacks, this paper introduces a generic LLM jailbreak defense framework called SelfDefend, which establishes a shadow LLM defense instance to concurrently protect the target LLM instance in the normal stack and collaborate with it for checkpoint-based access control. The effectiveness of SelfDefend builds upon our observation that existing LLMs (both target and defense LLMs) have the capability to identify harmful prompts or intentions in user queries, which we empirically validate using the commonly used GPT-3.5/4 models across all major jailbreak attacks. Our measurements show that SelfDefend enables GPT-3.5 to suppress the attack success rate (ASR) by 8.97-95.74% (average: 60%) and GPT-4 by even 36.36-100% (average: 83%), while incurring negligible effects on normal queries. To further improve the defense's robustness and minimize costs, we employ a data distillation approach to tune dedicated open-source defense models. These models outperform four SOTA defenses and match the performance of GPT-4-based SelfDefend, with significantly lower extra delays. We also empirically show that the tuned models are robust to targeted GCG and prompt injection attacks.

A proficient summarization model should exhibit both flexibility -- the capacity to handle a range of in-domain summarization tasks, and adaptability -- the competence to acquire new knowledge and adjust to unseen out-of-domain tasks. Unlike large language models (LLMs) that achieve this through parameter scaling, we propose a more parameter-efficient approach in this study. Our motivation rests on the principle that the general summarization ability to capture salient information can be shared across different tasks, while the domain-specific summarization abilities need to be distinct and tailored. Concretely, we propose MoeSumm, a Mixture-of-Expert Summarization architecture, which utilizes a main expert for gaining the general summarization capability and deputy experts that selectively collaborate to meet specific summarization task requirements. We further propose a max-margin loss to stimulate the separation of these abilities. Our model's distinct separation of general and domain-specific summarization abilities grants it with notable flexibility and adaptability, all while maintaining parameter efficiency. MoeSumm achieves flexibility by managing summarization across multiple domains with a single model, utilizing a shared main expert and selected deputy experts. It exhibits adaptability by tailoring deputy experts to cater to out-of-domain few-shot and zero-shot scenarios. Experimental results on 11 datasets show the superiority of our model compared with recent baselines and LLMs. We also provide statistical and visual evidence of the distinct separation of the two abilities in MoeSumm (https://github.com/iriscxy/MoE_Summ).

Excessive memory requirements of key and value features (KV-cache) present significant challenges in the autoregressive inference of large language models (LLMs), restricting both the speed and length of text generation. Approaches such as Multi-Query Attention (MQA) and Grouped Query Attention (GQA) mitigate these challenges by grouping query heads and consequently reducing the number of corresponding key and value heads. However, MQA and GQA decrease the KV-cache size requirements at the expense of LLM accuracy (quality of text generation). These methods do not ensure an optimal tradeoff between KV-cache size and text generation quality due to the absence of quality-aware grouping of query heads. To address this issue, we propose Quality and Capacity-Aware Grouped Query Attention (QCQA), which identifies optimal query head groupings using an evolutionary algorithm with a computationally efficient and inexpensive fitness function. We demonstrate that QCQA achieves a significantly better tradeoff between KV-cache capacity and LLM accuracy compared to GQA. For the Llama2 $7\,$B model, QCQA achieves $\mathbf{20}$\% higher accuracy than GQA with similar KV-cache size requirements in the absence of fine-tuning. After fine-tuning both QCQA and GQA, for a similar KV-cache size, QCQA provides $\mathbf{10.55}\,$\% higher accuracy than GQA. Furthermore, QCQA requires $40\,$\% less KV-cache size than GQA to attain similar accuracy. The proposed quality and capacity-aware grouping of query heads can serve as a new paradigm for KV-cache optimization in autoregressive LLM inference.

Recent developments in pretrained large language models (LLMs) applied to robotics have demonstrated their capacity for sequencing a set of discrete skills to achieve open-ended goals in simple robotic tasks. In this paper, we examine the topic of LLM planning for a set of continuously parameterized skills whose execution must avoid violations of a set of kinematic, geometric, and physical constraints. We prompt the LLM to output code for a function with open parameters, which, together with environmental constraints, can be viewed as a Continuous Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CCSP). This CCSP can be solved through sampling or optimization to find a skill sequence and continuous parameter settings that achieve the goal while avoiding constraint violations. Additionally, we consider cases where the LLM proposes unsatisfiable CCSPs, such as those that are kinematically infeasible, dynamically unstable, or lead to collisions, and re-prompt the LLM to form a new CCSP accordingly. Experiments across three different simulated 3D domains demonstrate that our proposed strategy, PRoC3S, is capable of solving a wide range of complex manipulation tasks with realistic constraints on continuous parameters much more efficiently and effectively than existing baselines.

The most recent pointwise Large Language Model (LLM) rankers have achieved remarkable ranking results. However, these rankers are hindered by two major drawbacks: (1) they fail to follow a standardized comparison guidance during the ranking process, and (2) they struggle with comprehensive considerations when dealing with complicated passages. To address these shortcomings, we propose to build a ranker that generates ranking scores based on a set of criteria from various perspectives. These criteria are intended to direct each perspective in providing a distinct yet synergistic evaluation. Our research, which examines eight datasets from the BEIR benchmark demonstrates that incorporating this multi-perspective criteria ensemble approach markedly enhanced the performance of pointwise LLM rankers.

We explore the ability of GPT-4 to perform ad-hoc schema based information extraction from scientific literature. We assess specifically whether it can, with a basic prompting approach, replicate two existing material science datasets, given the manuscripts from which they were originally manually extracted. We employ materials scientists to perform a detailed manual error analysis to assess where the model struggles to faithfully extract the desired information, and draw on their insights to suggest research directions to address this broadly important task.

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) improves the alignment of large language models (LLMs) with human values by training directly on human preference datasets, eliminating the need for reward models. However, due to the presence of cross-domain human preferences, direct continual training can lead to catastrophic forgetting, limiting DPO's performance and efficiency. Inspired by intraspecific competition driving species evolution, we propose a Online Fast-Slow chasing DPO (OFS-DPO) for preference alignment, simulating competition through fast and slow chasing among models to facilitate rapid adaptation. Specifically, we first derive the regret upper bound for online learning, validating our motivation with a min-max optimization pattern. Based on this, we introduce two identical modules using Low-rank Adaptive (LoRA) with different optimization speeds to simulate intraspecific competition, and propose a new regularization term to guide their learning. To further mitigate catastrophic forgetting in cross-domain scenarios, we extend the OFS-DPO with LoRA modules combination strategy, resulting in the Cross domain Online Fast-Slow chasing DPO (COFS-DPO). This method leverages linear combinations of fast modules parameters from different task domains, fully utilizing historical information to achive continual value alignment. Experimental results show that OFS-DPO outperforms DPO in in-domain alignment, while COFS-DPO excels in cross-domain continual learning scenarios.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing but can exhibit biases and may generate toxic content. While alignment techniques like Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) reduce these issues, their impact on creativity, defined as syntactic and semantic diversity, remains unexplored. We investigate the unintended consequences of RLHF on the creativity of LLMs through three experiments focusing on the Llama-2 series. Our findings reveal that aligned models exhibit lower entropy in token predictions, form distinct clusters in the embedding space, and gravitate towards "attractor states", indicating limited output diversity. Our findings have significant implications for marketers who rely on LLMs for creative tasks such as copywriting, ad creation, and customer persona generation. The trade-off between consistency and creativity in aligned models should be carefully considered when selecting the appropriate model for a given application. We also discuss the importance of prompt engineering in harnessing the creative potential of base models.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are being deployed across various domains today. However, their capacity to solve Capture the Flag (CTF) challenges in cybersecurity has not been thoroughly evaluated. To address this, we develop a novel method to assess LLMs in solving CTF challenges by creating a scalable, open-source benchmark database specifically designed for these applications. This database includes metadata for LLM testing and adaptive learning, compiling a diverse range of CTF challenges from popular competitions. Utilizing the advanced function calling capabilities of LLMs, we build a fully automated system with an enhanced workflow and support for external tool calls. Our benchmark dataset and automated framework allow us to evaluate the performance of five LLMs, encompassing both black-box and open-source models. This work lays the foundation for future research into improving the efficiency of LLMs in interactive cybersecurity tasks and automated task planning. By providing a specialized dataset, our project offers an ideal platform for developing, testing, and refining LLM-based approaches to vulnerability detection and resolution. Evaluating LLMs on these challenges and comparing with human performance yields insights into their potential for AI-driven cybersecurity solutions to perform real-world threat management. We make our dataset open source to public https://github.com/NYU-LLM-CTF/LLM_CTF_Database along with our playground automated framework https://github.com/NYU-LLM-CTF/llm_ctf_automation.