Jingyuan Wang, Yankai Chen, Zhonghang Li University of Hong Kong and South China University of Technology, Chao Huang University of Hong Kong
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable progress in reasoning, often through supervised fine-tuning (SFT). However, SFT is resource-intensive, relying on large curated datasets, rejection-sampled demonstrations, and uniform optimization across all tokens—even though only a fraction carry meaningful learning value. In this work, we explore a counterintuitive idea: can smaller language models (SLMs) teach larger language models (LLMs) by revealing high-value reasoning moments that reflect the latter’s unique strength? We propose LightReasoner, a novel framework that leverages the behavioral divergence between a stronger expert model (LLM) and a weaker amateur model (SLM). LightReasoner operates in two stages: (1) a sampling stage that pinpoints critical reasoning moments and constructs supervision examples capturing the expert’s advantage through expert–amateur contrast, and (2) a fine-tuning stage that aligns the expert model with these distilled examples, amplifying its reasoning strengths. Across seven benchmarks, LightReasoner improves accuracy by up to 28.1%, while reducing time consumption by 90%, sampled problems by 80%, and tuned token usage by 99%, all without relying on ground-truth labels. By turning weaker SLMs into effective teaching signals, LightReasoner offers a scalable and resource-efficient approach for advancing LLM reasoning.
尚无 AI 解读，展示原文摘要
cs.CL
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表
Tianyu Fan, Jingyuan Wang, Xubin Ren, Chao Huang University of Hong Kong
The growing demand for efficient and lightweight Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems has highlighted significant challenges when deploying Small Language Models (SLMs) in existing RAG frameworks. Current approaches face severe performance degradation due to SLMs’ limited semantic understanding and text processing capabilities, creating barriers for widespread adoption in resource-constrained scenarios. To address these fundamental limitations, we present MiniRAG, a novel RAG system designed for simplicity and efficiency. MiniRAG introduces two key technical innovations: (1) a semantic-aware heterogeneous graph indexing mechanism that combines text chunks and named entities in a unified structure, reducing reliance on complex semantic understanding, and (2) a lightweight topology-enhanced retrieval approach that leverages graph structures for efficient knowledge discovery without requiring advanced language capabilities. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that MiniRAG achieves comparable performance to LLM-based methods even when using SLMs while requiring only 25% of the storage space. Additionally, we contribute a comprehensive benchmark dataset for evaluating lightweight RAG systems under realistic on-device scenarios with complex queries.
尚无 AI 解读，展示原文摘要
cs.CL
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表
Yang Liu Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence, Hongming Li, Melissa Xiaohui Qin, Chao Huang University of Science and Technology Beijing, Qiankun Liu University of Science and Technology Beijing
We present SemanticQA, an evaluation suite designed to assess language models (LMs) in semantic phrase processing tasks. The benchmark consolidates existing multiword expression (MwE) resources and reorganizes them into a unified testbed. It covers both general lexical phenomena, such as lexical collocations, and three fine-grained categories: idiomatic expressions, noun compounds, and verbal constructions. Through SemanticQA, we assess LMs of diverse architectures and scales in extraction, classification, and interpretation tasks, as well as sequential task compositions. We reveal substantial performance variation, particularly on tasks requiring semantic reasoning, highlighting differences in reasoning efficacy and semantic understanding of LMs, providing insights for pushing LMs with stronger comprehension on non-trivial semantic phrases. The evaluation harness and data of SemanticQA are available at https://github.com/jacklanda/SemanticQA.
尚无 AI 解读，展示原文摘要
cs.CL
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表
Sikuan Yan Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Huawei Technologies Ltd., Xiufeng Yang, Zuchao Huang, Ercong Nie Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zifeng Ding, Zonggen Li University of Hong Kong, Xiaowen Ma, Jinhe Bi 等 13 位作者
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities across a wide range of NLP tasks, but they remain fundamentally stateless, constrained by limited context windows that hinder long-horizon reasoning. Recent efforts to address this limitation often augment LLMs with an external memory bank, yet most existing pipelines are static and heuristic-driven, lacking a learned mechanism for deciding what to store, update, or retrieve. We present Memory-R1, a reinforcement learning (RL) framework that equips LLMs with the ability to actively manage and utilize external memory through two specialized agents: a Memory Manager that learns structured operations, including ADD, UPDATE, DELETE, and NOOP; and an Answer Agent that pre-selects and reasons over relevant entries. Both agents are fine-tuned with outcome-driven RL (PPO and GRPO), enabling adaptive memory management with minimal supervision. With only 152 training QA pairs, Memory-R1 outperforms strong baselines and generalizes across diverse question types, three benchmarks (LoCoMo, MSC, LongMemEval), and multiple model scales (3B–14B).
尚无 AI 解读，展示原文摘要
cs.CL
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表
Xingchen Zou, Yuhao Yang, Zheng Chen pcitech, Xixuan Hao, Yiqi Chen, Chao Huang University of Hong Kong, Yuxuan Liang The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
We introduce Traffic-R1, a 3B-parameter foundation model with human-like reasoning for Traffic signal control (TSC), developed via self-exploration and iterative reinforcement of LLM with expert guidance in a simulated traffic environment. Compared with traditional reinforcement learning and recent LLM-based methods, Traffic-R1 offers three main advantages: zero-shot generalization, transferring unchanged to new road networks and out-of-distribution incidents by leveraging internal traffic-control policies and reasoning; a compact 3B-parameter design that supports real-time inference on mobile-class chips for edge deployment; and an explainable TSC process that enables multi-intersection coordination through communication and an asynchronous communication network. Extensive benchmarks show Traffic-R1 outperforms strong baselines and training-intensive RL controllers. In production, the model now manages signals affecting over 55,000 drivers daily, reduces average queue lengths by more than 5%, and halves operator workload. We will open source our checkpoint and code to foster further research.
尚无 AI 解读，展示原文摘要
cs.CL
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表