Recently, self-play fine-tuning (SPIN) has been proposed to adapt large language models to downstream applications with scarce expert-annotated data, by iteratively generating synthetic responses from the model itself. However, SPINis designed to optimize the current reward advantages of annotated responses over synthetic responses at hand, which may gradually vanish during iterations, leading to unstable optimization. Moreover, the utilization of reference policy induces a misalignment issue between the reward formulation for training and the metric for generation. To address these limitations, we propose a novel Triplet-based Self-Play fIne-tuNing (T-SPIN) method that integrates two key designs. First, beyond current advantages, T-SPINadditionally incorporates historical advantages between iteratively generated responses and proto-synthetic responses produced by the initial policy. Even if the current advantages diminish, historical advantages remain effective, stabilizing the overall optimization. Second, T-SPIN introduces the entropy constraint into the self-play framework, which is theoretically justified to support reference-free fine-tuning, eliminating the training-generation discrepancy. Empirical results on various tasks demonstrate not only the superior performance of T-SPINover SPIN, but also its stable evolution during iterations. Remarkably, compared to supervised fine-tuning, T-SPIN achieves comparable or even better performance with only 25%samples, highlighting its effectiveness when faced with scarce annotated data.

Reasoning Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have shown promising performance on complex multimodal tasks. However, they still face significant challenges: they are highly sensitive to reasoning errors, require large volumes of annotated data or accurate verifiers, and struggle to generalize beyond specific domains. To address these limitations, we explore self-correction as a strategy to enhance reasoning VLMs. We first conduct an in-depth analysis of reasoning VLMs' self-correction abilities and identify key gaps. Based on our findings, we introduce \emph{Sherlock}, a self-correction and self-improvement training framework.

We present a grammar error correction (GEC) system that achieves state of the art for the Czech language. Our system is based on a neural network translation approach with the Transformer architecture, and its key feature is its real-time synthetic generation pipeline, which dynamically augments sentences with artificial errors by introducing both language-agnostic and Czech-specific errors. We conduct a comprehensive series of experiments, investigating the Czech GEC corpora as bases for synthetic error introduction, several error generation strategies, domain balancing, tokenization granularity, model size, and data scaling during fine-tuning. Additionally, we evaluate the performance of large language models (LLMs) on Czech GEC in both end-user and expert fine-tuning scenarios. Our best-performing model is superior both in performance and computational efficiency. The source code and the trained model links are available on https://github.com/ufal/tsd2025-gec.

Model steering represents a powerful technique that dynamically aligns large language models (LLMs) with human preferences during inference. However, conventional model-steering methods rely heavily on externally annotated data, not only limiting their adaptability to varying contexts but also tethering their effectiveness to annotation quality. In this paper, we present SIMS, the first self-improving model-steering framework that operates without relying on external supervision. At its core, SIMS autonomously generates and refines contrastive samples through iterative self-improvement cycles, enabling adaptive, context-specific steering. Additionally, SIMS employs novel strategies, including prompt ranking and contrast sampling, to further enhance steering efficacy. Extensive evaluation across diverse LLMs and benchmarks demonstrates that SIMS substantially outperforms existing methods in steering effectiveness and adaptability, highlighting self-improving model steering as a promising direction for future research on inference-time LLM alignment.

Supervised learning relies on annotated data, which is expensive to obtain. A longstanding strategy to reduce annotation costs is active learning, an iterative process, in which a human annotates only data instances deemed informative by a model. Large language models (LLMs) have pushed the effectiveness of active learning, but have also improved methods such as few- or zero-shot learning, and text synthesis - thereby introducing potential alternatives. This raises the question: has active learning become obsolete? To answer this fully, we must look beyond literature to practical experiences. We conduct an online survey in the NLP community to collect previously intangible insights on the perceived relevance of data annotation, particularly focusing on active learning, including best practices, obstacles and expected future developments. Our findings show that annotated data remains a key factor, and active learning continues to be relevant. While the majority of active learning users find it effective, a comparison with a community survey from over a decade ago reveals persistent challenges: setup complexity, estimation of cost reduction, and tooling. We publish an anonymized version of the collected dataset

Longitudinal network data are essential for analyzing political, economic, and social systems and processes. In political science, these datasets are often generated through human annotation or supervised machine learning applied to evolving corpora. However, as semantic contexts shift over time, inferring dynamic interaction types on emerging issues among a diverse set of entities poses significant challenges, particularly in maintaining timely and consistent annotations. This paper presents the Expert-Augmented LLM Annotation (EALA) approach, which leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) in combination with historically annotated data and expert-constructed codebooks to extrapolate and extend datasets into future periods. We evaluate the performance and reliability of EALA using a dataset of climate negotiations. Our findings demonstrate that EALA effectively predicts nuanced interactions between negotiation parties and captures the evolution of topics over time. At the same time, we identify several limitations inherent to LLM-based annotation, highlighting areas for further improvement. Given the wide availability of codebooks and annotated datasets, EALA holds substantial promise for advancing research in political science and beyond.

This paper presents an iterative approach to performing Scientific Named Entity Recognition (SciNER) using BERT - based models. We leverage transfer learning to fine - tune pre - trained models with a small but high - quality set of manually annotated data. The process is iteratively refined by using the fine - tuned model to auto - annotate a larger dataset, followed by additional rounds of fine - tuning. We evaluated two models, dslim/bert - large - NER and bert - large - cased, and found that bert - large - cased consistently outperformed the former. Our approach demonstrated significant improvements in prediction accuracy and F1 sco res, especially for less common entity classes. Future work could include pre - training with unlabeled data, exploring more powerful encoders like RoBERTa, and expanding the scope of manual annotations. This methodology has broader applications in NLP tasks where access to labeled data is limited.

This study explores computational approaches for measuring moral foundations (MFs) in non-English corpora. Since most resources are developed primarily for English, cross-linguistic applications of moral foundation theory remain limited. Using Chinese as a case study, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of applying English resources to machine translated text, local language lexicons, multilingual language models, and large language models (LLMs) in measuring MFs in non-English texts. The results indicate that machine translation and local lexicon approaches are insufficient for complex moral assessments, frequently resulting in a substantial loss of cultural information. In contrast, multilingual models and LLMs demonstrate reliable cross-language performance with transfer learning, with LLMs excelling in terms of data efficiency. Importantly, this study also underscores the need for human-in-the-loop validation of automated MF assessment, as the most advanced models may overlook cultural nuances in cross-language measurements. The findings highlight the potential of LLMs for cross-language MF measurements and other complex multilingual deductive coding tasks.