Kewei Xu
2026
How Controllable Are Large Language Models? A Unified Evaluation across Behavioral Granularities
Ziwen Xu | Kewei Xu | Haoming Xu | Haiwen Hong | Longtao Huang | Hui Xue | Ningyu Zhang | Yongliang Shen | Guozhou Zheng | Huajun Chen | Shumin Deng
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Ziwen Xu | Kewei Xu | Haoming Xu | Haiwen Hong | Longtao Huang | Hui Xue | Ningyu Zhang | Yongliang Shen | Guozhou Zheng | Huajun Chen | Shumin Deng
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in socially sensitive domains, yet their unpredictable behaviors, ranging from misaligned intent to inconsistent personality, pose significant risks. We introduce SteerEval, a hierarchical benchmark for evaluating LLM controllability across three domains: language features, sentiment, and personality. Each domain is structured into three specification levels: L1 (what to express), L2 (how to express), and L3 (how to instantiate), connecting high-level behavioral intent to concrete textual output. Using SteerBench, we systematically evaluate contemporary steering methods, revealing that control often degrades at finer-grained levels. Our benchmark offers a principled and interpretable framework for safe and controllable LLM behavior, serving as a foundation for future research.
2025
EasyEdit2: An Easy-to-use Steering Framework for Editing Large Language Models
Ziwen Xu | Shuxun Wang | Kewei Xu | Haoming Xu | Mengru Wang | Xinle Deng | Yunzhi Yao | Guozhou Zheng | Huajun Chen | Ningyu Zhang
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: System Demonstrations
Ziwen Xu | Shuxun Wang | Kewei Xu | Haoming Xu | Mengru Wang | Xinle Deng | Yunzhi Yao | Guozhou Zheng | Huajun Chen | Ningyu Zhang
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: System Demonstrations
In this paper, we introduce EasyEdit2, a framework designed to enable plug-and-play adjustability for controlling Large Language Model (LLM) behaviors. EasyEdit2 supports a wide range of test-time interventions, including safety, sentiment, personality, reasoning patterns, factuality, and language features. Unlike its predecessor, EasyEdit2 features a new architecture specifically designed for seamless model steering. It comprises key modules such as the steering vector generator and the steering vector applier, which enable automatic generation and application of steering vectors to influence the model’s behavior without modifying its parameters. One of the main advantages of EasyEdit2 is its ease of use—users do not need extensive technical knowledge. With just a single example, they can effectively guide and adjust the model’s responses, making precise control both accessible and efficient. Empirically, we report model steering performance across different LLMs, demonstrating the effectiveness of these techniques. We have released the source code on https://github.com/zjunlp/EasyEdit along with a demonstration notebook. In addition, we provide an online system at http://easyedit.zjukg.cn/for real-time model steering, and a demo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkfoiPfp5rQ.