In this work, we investigate how to sparsify a pre-trained dense large language model into a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture for faster inference. Our approach applies mask matrix to the activations for each expert, constrained by L₀ regularization to minimize the number of activated parameters. Starting with all parameters active, the model is progressively sparsified during training, ensuring minimal performance loss. This approach proves more efficient than one-shot sparsification techniques, which typically require significant resources for performance recovery. Moreover, our approach automatically identifies shared, token-specific, and inactive experts, allowing for more efficient allocation of computational resources. Through extensive experiments, we achieve up to 97% performance retention on downstream tasks with only 50% of the feed-forward parameters activated in dense models. Beyond enhancing inference efficiency, this strategy of sharing computational units among experts presents a valuable framework for designing more generalized and efficient MoE architectures, opening avenues for future advancements in expert-based models.

Automated Essay Assessment (AEA) aims to judge students’ writing proficiency in an automatic way. This paper presents a Chinese AEA system IFlyEssayAssess (IFlyEA), targeting on evaluating essays written by native Chinese students from primary and junior schools. IFlyEA provides multi-level and multi-dimension analytical modules for essay assessment. It has state-of-the-art grammar level analysis techniques, and also integrates components for rhetoric and discourse level analysis, which are important for evaluating native speakers’ writing ability, but still challenging and less studied in previous work. Based on the comprehensive analysis, IFlyEA provides application services for essay scoring, review generation, recommendation, and explainable analytical visualization. These services can benefit both teachers and students during the process of writing teaching and learning.