Two Steps from Hell: Compositionality on Chemical LMs

Veronika Ganeeva, Kuzma Khrabrov, Artur Kadurin, Elena Tutubalina


Abstract
This paper investigates compositionality in chemical language models (ChemLLMs). We introduce STEPS, a benchmark with compositional questions that reflect intricate chemical structures and reactions, to evaluate models’ understanding of chemical language. Our approach focuses on identifying and analyzing compositional patterns within chemical data, allowing us to evaluate how well existing LLMs can handle complex queries. Experiments with state-of-the-art ChemLLMs show significant performance drops in compositional tasks, highlighting the need for models that move beyond pattern recognition. By creating and sharing this benchmark, we aim to enhance the development of more capable chemical LLMs and provide a resource for future research on compositionality in chemical understanding.
Anthology ID:
2025.findings-emnlp.55
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025
Month:
November
Year:
2025
Address:
Suzhou, China
Editors:
Christos Christodoulopoulos, Tanmoy Chakraborty, Carolyn Rose, Violet Peng
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
1042–1049
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/author-page-yu-wang-polytechnic/2025.findings-emnlp.55/
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2025.findings-emnlp.55
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Veronika Ganeeva, Kuzma Khrabrov, Artur Kadurin, and Elena Tutubalina. 2025. Two Steps from Hell: Compositionality on Chemical LMs. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025, pages 1042–1049, Suzhou, China. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Two Steps from Hell: Compositionality on Chemical LMs (Ganeeva et al., Findings 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/author-page-yu-wang-polytechnic/2025.findings-emnlp.55.pdf
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