Large Language Model Powered Symbolic Execution

This paper discusses a multimodal AI system applied to legal reasoning for tax law. The results given here are very general and apply to systems developed for other areas besides tax law. A central goal of this work is to gain a better understanding of the relationships between LLMs (Large Language Models) and automated theorem-proving methodologies. To do this, we suppose (1) two cases for the theorem-proving system: one where it has a countable number of total meanings for its countable number of atoms and the other is where it has an uncountable number of total meanings for its countable number of atoms, and (2) LLMs can have an uncountable number of token meanings. With this in mind, the results given in this paper use the downward and upward Löwenheim–Skolem theorems and logical model theory to contrast these two AI modalities. One modality focuses on syntactic proofs and the other focuses on logical semantics based on LLMs. Particularly, one modality uses a rule-based first-order logic theorem-proving system to perform legal reasoning. The objective of this theorem-proving system is to provide proofs as evidence of valid legal reasoning when enacted laws are applied to particular situations. These proofs are syntactic structures that can be presented in the form of narrative explanations of how the answer to the legal question was determined. The second modality uses LLMs to analyze and transform a user’s tax query so this query can be sent to a first-order logic theorem-proving system to perform its legal reasoning function. The main goal of our application of LLMs is to enhance and simplify user input and output for the theorem-proving system. Using logical model theory, we show how there can exist an equivalence between laws represented in logic of the theorem-proving system, fixed in time when the theorem-proving system was set up, and new semantics given by LLMs. These results are based on logical model theory and Löwenheim–Skolem theorems.

Large language models (LLMs) have shown impressive capabilities across various natural language tasks. However, evaluating their alignment with human preferences remains a challenge. To this end, we propose a comprehensive human evaluation framework to assess LLMs’ proficiency in following instructions on diverse real-world tasks. We construct a hierarchical task tree encompassing 7 major areas covering over 200 categories and over 800 tasks, which covers diverse capabilities such as question answering, reasoning, multiturn dialogue, and text generation, to evaluate LLMs in a comprehensive and in-depth manner. We also design detailed evaluation standards and processes to facilitate consistent, unbiased judgments from human evaluators. A test set of over 3,000 instances is released, spanning different difficulty levels and knowledge domains. Our work provides a standardized methodology to evaluate human alignment in LLMs for both English and Chinese. We also analyze the feasibility of automating parts of evaluation with a strong LLM (GPT-4). Our framework supports a thorough assessment of LLMs as they are integrated into real-world applications. We have made publicly available the task tree, TencentLLMEval dataset, and evaluation methodology which have been demonstrated as effective in assessing the performance of Tencent Hunyuan LLMs 1 . By doing so, we aim to facilitate the benchmarking of advances in the development of safe and human-aligned LLMs.

Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate impressive performance on a wide variety of tasks, but they often struggle with tasks that require multi-step reasoning or goal-directed planning. To address this, we take inspiration from the human brain, in which planning is accomplished via component processes that are predominantly associated with specific brain regions. These processes include conflict monitoring, state prediction, state evaluation, task decomposition, and task coordination. We find that LLMs are often capable of carrying out these functions in isolation, but struggle to autonomously coordinate them in the service of a goal. Therefore, we propose a modular agentic architecture - the Modular Agentic Planner (MAP) - in which planning is performed via the interaction of specialized brain-inspired LLM modules. We evaluate MAP on three challenging planning tasks - graph traversal, Tower of Hanoi, and the PlanBench benchmark - as well as an NLP task requiring multi-step reasoning (strategyQA). We find that MAP yields significant improvements over both standard LLM methods and competitive agentic baselines, can be effectively combined with smaller and more cost-efficient LLMs, and displays superior transfer across tasks. These results demonstrate the benefit of utilizing knowledge from cognitive neuroscience to improve planning in LLMs.

BackgroundThe study of disease progression relies on clinical data, including text data, and extracting valuable features from text data has been a research hot spot. With the rise of large language models (LLMs), semantic-based extraction pipelines are gaining acceptance in clinical research. However, the security and feature hallucination issues of LLMs require further attention.ObjectiveThis study aimed to introduce a novel modular LLM pipeline, which could semantically extract features from textual patient admission records.MethodsThe pipeline was designed to process a systematic succession of concept extraction, aggregation, question generation, corpus extraction, and question-and-answer scale extraction, which was tested via 2 low-parameter LLMs: Qwen-14B-Chat (QWEN) and Baichuan2-13B-Chat (BAICHUAN). A data set of 25,709 pregnancy cases from the People’s Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, was used for evaluation with the help of a local expert’s annotation. The pipeline was evaluated with the metrics of accuracy and precision, null ratio, and time consumption. Additionally, we evaluated its performance via a quantified version of Qwen-14B-Chat on a consumer-grade GPU.ResultsThe pipeline demonstrates a high level of precision in feature extraction, as evidenced by the accuracy and precision results of Qwen-14B-Chat (95.52% and 92.93%, respectively) and Baichuan2-13B-Chat (95.86% and 90.08%, respectively). Furthermore, the pipeline exhibited low null ratios and variable time consumption. The INT4-quantified version of QWEN delivered an enhanced performance with 97.28% accuracy and a 0% null ratio.ConclusionsThe pipeline exhibited consistent performance across different LLMs and efficiently extracted clinical features from textual data. It also showed reliable performance on consumer-grade hardware. This approach offers a viable and effective solution for mining clinical research data from textual records.

The article presents a methodology for designing a benchmark to assess numerical reasoning skills in Large Language Models (LLMs). In the context of LLMs, numerical reasoning is defined as a model’s ability to correctly interpret, process, and utilize numerical information in text, including understanding magnitudes and relations between numbers, performing arithmetic operations, and generating numerals accurately in its outputs. The proposed methodology is based on decomposing applied tasks and enables targeted evaluation of specific facets of numerical reasoning using tasks that involve numerals. Particular attention is paid to the representation of numbers in textual prompts to LLMs, as this factor directly affects the quality of the final output. The need for rigorous assessment of LLMs’ numerical reasoning stems from its critical role across a wide range of text-centric applications, including automated summarization, generation of analytical reports, extraction and interpretation of quantitative data, and conversational systems operating on financial, scientific, or technical information. Drawing on an analysis of state-of-the-art LLM evaluation approaches, core principles for constructing evaluation benchmarks are formulated with an emphasis on generality and real-world applicability. In accordance with the proposed methodology, the MUE (Math Understanding Evaluation) benchmark is introduced; it comprises five test suites, each designed to assess a distinct aspect of LLM numerical reasoning. A comparative evaluation of popular LLMs is conducted, leading models are identified, and the strengths and weaknesses of their numerical reasoning are characterized. The findings are intended to inform LLM developers in refining architectures and training strategies, and to guide end users and integrators in selecting an optimal model for applied projects.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have become integral to a wide spectrum of applications, ranging from traditional computing tasks to advanced artificial intelligence (AI) applications. This widespread adoption has spurred extensive research into LLMs across various disciplines, including the social sciences. Notably, studies have revealed that LLMs possess emotional intelligence, which can be further developed through positive emotional stimuli. This discovery raises an intriguing question: can negative emotions similarly influence LLMs, potentially enhancing their performance? In response to this question, we introduce NegativePrompt, a novel approach underpinned by psychological principles, involving ten specifically designed negative emotional stimuli. We embark on rigorous experimental evaluations of five LLMs including Flan-T5-Large, Vicuna, Llama 2, ChatGPT, and GPT-4, across a set of 45 tasks. The results are revealing: NegativePrompt markedly enhances the performance of LLMs, evidenced by relative improvements of 12.89% in Instruction Induction tasks and 46.25% in BIG-Bench tasks. Moreover, we conduct attention visualization experiments to decipher the underlying mechanisms of NegativePrompt's influence. Our research contributes significantly to the understanding of LLMs and emotion interaction, demonstrating the practical efficacy of NegativePrompt as an emotion-driven method and offering novel insights for the enhancement of LLMs in real-world applications. The code is available at https://github.com/wangxu0820/NegativePrompt.

Large language models have found utility in the domain of robot task planning and task decomposition. Nevertheless, the direct application of these models for instructing robots in task execution is not without its challenges. Limitations arise in handling more intricate tasks, encountering difficulties in effective interaction with the environment, and facing constraints in the practical executability of machine control instructions directly generated by such models. In response to these challenges, this research advocates for the implementation of a multi-layer large language model to augment a robot's proficiency in handling complex tasks. The proposed model facilitates a meticulous layer-by-layer decomposition of tasks through the integration of multiple large language models, with the overarching goal of enhancing the accuracy of task planning. Within the task decomposition process, a visual language model is introduced as a sensor for environment perception. The outcomes of this perception process are subsequently assimilated into the large language model, thereby amalgamating the task objectives with environmental information. This integration, in turn, results in the generation of robot motion planning tailored to the specific characteristics of the current environment. Furthermore, to enhance the executability of task planning outputs from the large language model, a semantic alignment method is introduced. This method aligns task planning descriptions with the functional requirements of robot motion, thereby refining the overall compatibility and coherence of the generated instructions. To validate the efficacy of the proposed approach, an experimental platform is established utilizing an intelligent unmanned vehicle. This platform serves as a means to empirically verify the proficiency of the multi-layer large language model in addressing the intricate challenges associated with both robot task planning and execution.

This study investigates the behaviors of Large Language Models (LLMs) when faced with conflicting prompts versus their internal memory. This will not only help to understand LLMs' decision mechanism but also benefit real-world applications, such as retrievalaugmented generation (RAG). Drawing on cognitive theory, we target the first scenario of decision-making styles where there is no superiority in the conflict and categorize LLMs' preference into dependent, intuitive, and rational/irrational styles. Another scenario of factual robustness considers the correctness of prompt and memory in knowledge-intensive tasks, which can also distinguish if LLMs behave rationally or irrationally in the first scenario. To quantify them, we establish a complete benchmarking framework including a dataset, a robustness evaluation pipeline, and corresponding metrics. Extensive experiments with seven LLMs reveal their varying behaviors. And, with role play intervention, we can change the styles, but different models present distinct adaptivity and upper-bound. One of our key takeaways is to optimize models or the prompts according to the identified style. For instance, RAG models with high role play adaptability may dynamically adjust the interventions according to the quality of retrieval results -being dependent to better leverage informative context; and, being intuitive when external prompt is noisy.

Despite being empowered with alignment mechanisms, large language models (LLMs) are increasingly vulnerable to emerging jailbreak attacks that can compromise their alignment mechanisms. This vulnerability poses significant risks to real-world applications. Existing work faces challenges in both training efficiency and generalization capabilities (i.e., Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback and Red-Teaming). Developing effective strategies to enable LLMs to resist continuously evolving jailbreak attempts represents a significant challenge. To address this challenge, we propose a novel defensive paradigm called GuidelineLLM, which assists LLMs in recognizing queries that may have harmful content. Before LLMs respond to a query, GuidelineLLM first identifies potential risks associated with the query, summarizes these risks into guideline suggestions, and then feeds these guidelines to the responding LLMs. Importantly, our approach eliminates the necessity for additional safety fine-tuning of the LLMs themselves; only the GuidelineLLM requires fine-tuning. This characteristic enhances the general applicability of GuidelineLLM across various LLMs. Experimental results demonstrate that GuidelineLLM can significantly reduce the attack success rate (ASR) against LLM (an average reduction of 34.17% ASR) while maintaining the usefulness of LLM in handling benign queries.

BackgroundDisease name recognition is a fundamental task in clinical natural language processing, enabling the extraction of critical patient information from electronic health records. While recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have shown promise, most evaluations have focused on English, and little is known about their robustness in low-resource languages such as Japanese. In particular, whether these models can perform reliably on previously unseen in-hospital data, which differs from training data in writing styles and clinical contexts, has not been thoroughly investigated.ObjectiveThis study evaluated the robustness of fine-tuned LLMs for disease name recognition in Japanese clinical notes, with a particular focus on their performance on in-hospital data that was not included during training.MethodsWe used two corpora for this study: (1) a publicly available set of Japanese case reports denoted as CR, and (2) a newly constructed corpus of progress notes, denoted as PN, written by ten physicians to capture stylistic variations of in-hospital clinical notes. To reflect real-world deployment scenarios, we first fine-tuned models on CR. Specifically, we compared a LLM and a baseline-masked language model (MLM). These models were then evaluated under two conditions: (1) on CR, representing the in-domain (ID) setting with the same document type, similar to training, and (2) on PN, representing the out-of-domain (OOD) setting with a different document type. Robustness was assessed by calculating the performance gap (ie, the performance drop from in-domain to out-of-domain settings).ResultsThe LLM demonstrated greater robustness, with a smaller performance gap in F1-scores (ID–OOD = −8.6) compared to the MLM baseline performance (ID–OOD = −13.9). This indicated more stable performance across ID and OOD settings, highlighting the effectiveness of fine-tuned LLMs for reliable use in diverse clinical settings.ConclusionsFine-tuned LLMs demonstrate superior robustness for disease name recognition in Japanese clinical notes, with a smaller performance gap. These findings highlight the potential of LLMs as reliable tools for clinical natural language processing in low-resource language settings and support their deployment in real-world health care applications, where diversity in documentation is inevitable.

Entity Resolution (ER) is the problem of semi-automatically determining when two entities refer to the same underlying entity, with applications ranging from healthcare to e-commerce. Traditional ER solutions required considerable manual expertise, including domain-specific feature engineering, as well as identification and curation of training data. Recently released large language models (LLMs) provide an opportunity to make ER more seamless and domain-independent. Because of LLMs’ pre-trained knowledge, the matching step in ER can be made easier by just prompting. However, it is also well known that LLMs can pose risks, that the quality of their outputs can depend on how prompts are engineered, and that the cost of using LLMs can be significant. Unfortunately, a systematic experimental study on the effects of different prompting methods and their respective cost for solving domain-specific entity matching using LLMs, like ChatGPT, has been lacking thus far. This paper aims to address this gap by conducting such a study. We consider some relatively simple and cost-efficient ER prompt engineering methods and apply them to perform product matching on two real-world datasets widely used in the community. We select two well-known e-commerce datasets and provide extensive experimental results to show that an LLM like GPT3.5 is viable for high-performing product matching and, interestingly, that more complicated and detailed (and hence, expensive) prompting methods do not necessarily outperform simpler approaches. We provide brief discussions on qualitative and error analysis, including a study of the inter-consistency of different prompting methods to determine whether they yield stable outputs. Finally, we consider some limitations of LLMs when used as a product matcher in potential real-world e-commerce applications.

Graphs are a powerful tool for representing and analyzing complex relationships in real-world applications. Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities by advancing state-of-the-art on many language-based benchmarks. Their ability to process and understand natural language open exciting possibilities in various domains. Despite the remarkable progress in automated reasoning with natural text, reasoning on graphs with LLMs remains an understudied problem that has recently gained more attention.This tutorial builds upon recent advances in expressing reasoning problems through the lens of tasks on graph data. The first part of the tutorial will provide an in-depth discussion of techniques for representing graphs as inputs to LLMs. The second, hands-on, portion will demonstrate these techniques in a practical setting. As a learning outcome of participating in the tutorial, participants will be able to analyze graphs either on free-tier Colab or their local machines with the help of LLMs.

In this work, we are interested in automated methods for knowledge graph creation (KGC) from input text. Progress on large language models (LLMs) has prompted a series of recent works applying them to KGC, e.g., via zero/few-shot prompting. Despite successes on small domain-specific datasets, these models face difficulties scaling up to text common in many real-world applications. A principal issue is that, in prior methods, the KG schema has to be included in the LLM prompt to generate valid triplets; larger and more complex schemas easily exceed the LLMs' context window length. Furthermore, there are scenarios where a fixed pre-defined schema is not available and we would like the method to construct a high-quality KG with a succinct selfgenerated schema. To address these problems, we propose a three-phase framework named Extract-Define-Canonicalize (EDC): open information extraction followed by schema definition and post-hoc canonicalization. EDC is flexible in that it can be applied to settings where a pre-defined target schema is available and when it is not; in the latter case, it constructs a schema automatically and applies selfcanonicalization. To further improve performance, we introduce a trained component that retrieves schema elements relevant to the input text; this improves the LLMs' extraction performance in a retrieval-augmented generationlike manner. We demonstrate on three KGC benchmarks that EDC is able to extract highquality triplets without any parameter tuning and with significantly larger schemas compared to prior works. Code for EDC is available at https://github.com/clear-nus/edc.

Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly advancing natural language processing and driving increasing interest across biomedical research, clinical care, and healthcare operations. This systematic review synthesizes current empirical evidence on LLM applications in healthcare and biomedical informatics, focusing on their capabilities, evaluation practices, and reported outcomes. Existing studies highlight promising uses in research, where LLMs assist literature-informed genomic interpretation, functional annotation, and biological hypothesis generation, as well as support tasks related to protein and multiomics analysis. In clinical contexts, LLMs are primarily evaluated for natural language-driven tasks, including electronic health record summarization, clinical documentation support, medical question answering, and information extraction, rather than autonomous diagnostic or therapeutic decision-making. Early investigations also describe potential value in healthcare operations, patient communication, clinician education, and drug discovery workflows largely through knowledge retrieval, text generation, and semantic search. However, current evidence remains preliminary: most studies are retrospective, benchmark-based, simulation-driven, or limited to controlled research settings. Key challenges include hallucination and unreliable reasoning, bias and inequitable performance across populations, data privacy and security constraints, reproducibility limitations, and lack of prospective clinical validation and regulatory guidance. Emerging strategies, such as domain-specific pretraining, retrieval augmentation, multi-modal architectures, and privacy-preserving learning, aim to improve reliability, safety, and real-world applicability. This review concludes by outlining methodological, infrastructural, and governance requirements needed to responsibly integrate LLMs into biomedical workflows, emphasizing that clinical deployment remains exploratory and must be rigorously evaluated.

BackgroundIn recent years, large language models (LLMs) have shown promise in various domains, notably in biomedical sciences. However, their real-world application is often limited by issues like erroneous outputs and hallucinatory responses.ResultsWe developed the knowledge graph–based thought (KGT) framework, an innovative solution that integrates LLMs with knowledge graphs (KGs) to improve their initial responses by utilizing verifiable information from KGs, thus significantly reducing factual errors in reasoning. The KGT framework demonstrates strong adaptability and performs well across various open-source LLMs. Notably, KGT can facilitate the discovery of new uses for existing drugs through potential drug–cancer associations and can assist in predicting resistance by analyzing relevant biomarkers and genetic mechanisms. To evaluate the knowledge graph question answering task within biomedicine, we utilize a pan-cancer knowledge graph to develop a pan-cancer question answering benchmark, named pan-cancer question answering.ConclusionsThe KGT framework substantially improves the accuracy and utility of LLMs in the biomedical field. This study serves as a proof of concept, demonstrating its exceptional performance in biomedical question answering.