Jingchi Jiang


2026

Lifelong model editing (LME) aims to sequentially rectify outdated or inaccurate knowledge in deployed LLMs while minimizing side effects on unrelated inputs. However, existing approaches typically apply parameter perturbations to a static and dense set of LLM layers for all editing instances. This practice is counter-intuitive, as we hypothesize that different pieces of knowledge are stored in distinct layers of the model. Neglecting this layer-wise specificity can impede adaptability in integrating new knowledge and result in catastrophic forgetting for both general and previously edited knowledge. To address this, we propose HiEdit, a hierarchical reinforcement learning framework that adaptively identifies the most knowledge-relevant layers for each editing instance. By enabling dynamic, instance-aware layer selection and incorporating an intrinsic reward for sparsity, HiEdit achieves precise, localized updates. Experiments on various LLMs show that HiEdit boosts the performance of the competitive RLEdit by an average of 8.48% with perturbing only half of the layers per edit. Our code is available at: https://github.com/yangfanww/hiedit.

2025

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has been shown to effectively align large language models (LLMs) with human knowledge. However, the lack of human preference labels remains a significant bottleneck when applying RLHF to a downstream domain. Humans in RLHF play a critical role in injecting reasoning preferences into LLM, and we assume the reasoning process underlying human assessments may potentially be replaced by reasoning pathways derived from Knowledge Graphs (KGs). Inspired by this assumption, we propose Reinforcement Learning from Knowledge Graph Feedback (RLKGF), a novel method that leverages KG semantics and structure to derive RL rewards in the absence of manual annotations. Unlike Reinforcement Learning from AI Feedback (RLAIF), RLKGF directly integrates human priors encoded in KGs as the reward model, aligning LLM responses with expert knowledge without additional preference labeling or reward model training. RLKGF structures context-relevant facts into knowledge subgraphs and defines rewards by simulating information flow across semantic and logical connections between question and candidate response entities. Experiments on three public and one private medical dialogue dataset demonstrate that RLKGF significantly outperforms the competitive RLAIF in improving LLM diagnostic accuracy. The code is available at https://github.com/YanPioneer/RLKGF.
Multi-hop question answering faces substantial challenges due to data sparsity, which increases the likelihood of language models learning spurious patterns. To address this issue, prior research has focused on diversifying question generation through content planning and varied expression. However, these approaches often emphasize generating simple questions and neglect the integration of essential knowledge, such as relevant sentences within documents. This paper introduces the **Knowledge Composition Sampling (KCS)**, an innovative framework designed to expand the diversity of generated multi-hop questions by sampling varied knowledge compositions within a given context. KCS models the knowledge composition selection as a sentence-level conditional prediction task and utilizes a probabilistic contrastive loss to predict the next most relevant piece of knowledge. During inference, we employ a stochastic decoding strategy to effectively balance accuracy and diversity. Compared to competitive baselines, our KCS improves the overall accuracy of knowledge composition selection by 3.9%, and its application for data augmentation yields improvements on HotpotQA and 2WikiMultihopQA datasets. Our code is available at: https://github.com/yangfanww/kcs.
Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs) integrating images, text, and speech can provide farmers with accurate diagnoses and treatment of pests and diseases, enhancing agricultural efficiency and sustainability. However, existing benchmarks lack comprehensive evaluations, particularly in multi-level reasoning, making it challenging to identify model limitations. To address this issue, we introduce Agri-CM3, an expert-validated benchmark assessing MLLMs’ understanding and reasoning in agricultural management. It includes 3,939 images and 15,901 multi-level multiple-choice questions with detailed explanations. Evaluations of 45 MLLMs reveal significant gaps. Even GPT-4o achieves only 63.64% accuracy, falling short in fine-grained reasoning tasks. Analysis across three reasoning levels and seven compositional abilities highlights key challenges in accuracy and cognitive understanding. Our study provides insights for advancing MLLMs in agricultural management, driving their development and application. Code and data are available at https://github.com/HIT-Kwoo/Agri-CM3.