Xianjie Wu
2026
Parameter Importance is Not Static: Evolving Parameter Isolation for Supervised Fine-Tuning
Zekai Lin | Chao Xue | Di Liang | Xingsheng Han | Peiyang Liu | Xianjie Wu | Lei Jiang | Yu Lu | Bob Simons | Shuang Liang | Minlong Peng
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Zekai Lin | Chao Xue | Di Liang | Xingsheng Han | Peiyang Liu | Xianjie Wu | Lei Jiang | Yu Lu | Bob Simons | Shuang Liang | Minlong Peng
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) of large language models often suffers from task interference and catastrophic forgetting. Recent approaches alleviate this issue by isolating task-critical parameters during training. However, these methods represent a static solution to a dynamic problem, assuming that parameter importance remains fixed once identified. In this work, we empirically demonstrate that parameter importance exhibits temporal drift over the course of training. To address this, we propose Evolving Parameter Isolation (EPI), a fine-tuning framework that adapts isolation decisions based on online estimates of parameter importance. Instead of freezing a fixed subset of parameters, EPI periodically updates isolation masks using gradient-based signals, enabling the model to protect emerging task-critical parameters while releasing outdated ones to recover plasticity. Experiments on diverse multi-task benchmarks demonstrate that EPI consistently reduces interference and forgetting compared to static isolation and standard fine-tuning, while improving overall generalization. Our analysis highlights the necessity of synchronizing isolation mechanisms with the evolving dynamics of learning diverse abilities.
Why Supervised Fine-Tuning Fails to Learn: A Systematic Study of Incomplete Learning in Large Language Models
Chao Xue | Yao Wang | Mengqiao Liu | Di Liang | Xingsheng Han | Peiyang Liu | Xianjie Wu | Chenyao Lu | Lei Jiang | Yu Lu | Haibo Shi | Shuang Liang | Minlong Peng | Flora D. Salim
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Chao Xue | Yao Wang | Mengqiao Liu | Di Liang | Xingsheng Han | Peiyang Liu | Xianjie Wu | Chenyao Lu | Lei Jiang | Yu Lu | Haibo Shi | Shuang Liang | Minlong Peng | Flora D. Salim
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) is the standard approach for adapting large language models (LLMs) to downstream tasks. However, we observe a persistent failure mode: even after convergence, models often fail to correctly reproduce a subset of their own supervised training data. We refer to this behavior as the Incomplete Learning Phenomenon (ILP). This paper presents the first systematic study of ILP in LLM fine-tuning. We formalize ILP as post-training failure to internalize supervised instances and demonstrate its prevalence across multiple model families, domains, and datasets. Through controlled analyses, we identify five recurrent sources of incomplete learning: (1) missing prerequisite knowledge in the pre-trained model, (2) conflicts between SFT supervision and pre-training knowledge, (3) internal inconsistencies within SFT data, (4) left-side forgetting during sequential fine-tuning, and (5) insufficient optimization for rare or complex patterns. We introduce a diagnostic-first framework that maps unlearned samples to these causes using observable training and inference signals, and study several targeted mitigation strategies as causal interventions. Experiments on Qwen, LLaMA, and OLMo2 show that incomplete learning is widespread and heterogeneous, and that improvements in aggregate metrics can mask persistent unlearned subsets. The findings highlight the need for fine-grained diagnosis of what supervised fine-tuning fails to learn, and why.
2025
Structural Reward Model: Enhancing Interpretability, Efficiency, and Scalability in Reward Modeling
Xiaoyu Liu | Di Liang | Hongyu Shan | Peiyang Liu | Yonghao Liu | Muling Wu | Yuntao Li | Xianjie Wu | Li Miao | Jiangrong Shen | Minlong Peng
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Industry Track
Xiaoyu Liu | Di Liang | Hongyu Shan | Peiyang Liu | Yonghao Liu | Muling Wu | Yuntao Li | Xianjie Wu | Li Miao | Jiangrong Shen | Minlong Peng
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Industry Track
Reward Models (RMs) are key components for evaluating and guiding language model outputs. However, traditional scalar RMs often struggle with incorporating contextual and background information during inference, leading to incomplete evaluations. Generative RMs (GRMs) attempt to address these limitations by generating intermediate reasoning steps. Yet, their uncontrolled black-box nature and inefficiency due to sequential decoding hinder their industrial deployment. Industrial scenarios, such as search and recommendation systems, often involve single-domain tasks requiring evaluation along specific dimensions. In such contexts, diagnosing “bad cases” necessitates structured feedback to identify and optimize dimension-specific issues.In this paper, we propose the Structural Reward Model (SRM), a modular and interpretable framework integrating side-branch models as auxiliary feature generators. By introducing fine-grained dimensions, SRMs enable interpretable and efficient evaluation, facilitating targeted diagnostics and optimization. This structured approach ensures adaptability and scalability for industrial applications.Through comprehensive experiments, we demonstrate that SRMs outperform scalar RMs and GRMs in robustness and alignment with human preferences. The modular design further supports efficient optimization for practical scenarios, allowing SRM to provide a practical reward modeling solution for industry.
XFormParser: A Simple and Effective Multimodal Multilingual Semi-structured Form Parser
Xianfu Cheng | Hang Zhang | Jian Yang | Xiang Li | Weixiao Zhou | Fei Liu | Kui Wu | Xiangyuan Guan | Tao Sun | Xianjie Wu | Tongliang Li | Zhoujun Li
Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Xianfu Cheng | Hang Zhang | Jian Yang | Xiang Li | Weixiao Zhou | Fei Liu | Kui Wu | Xiangyuan Guan | Tao Sun | Xianjie Wu | Tongliang Li | Zhoujun Li
Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
In the domain of Document AI, parsing semi-structured image form is a crucial Key Information Extraction (KIE) task. The advent of pre-trained multimodal models significantly empowers Document AI frameworks to extract key information from form documents in different formats such as PDF, Word, and images. Nonetheless, form parsing is still encumbered by notable challenges like subpar capabilities in multilingual parsing and diminished recall in industrial contexts in rich text and rich visuals. In this work, we introduce a simple but effective Multimodal and Multilingual semi-structured FORM PARSER (XFormParser), which is anchored on a comprehensive Transformer-based pre-trained language model and innovatively amalgamates semantic entity recognition (SER) and relation extraction (RE) into a unified framework. Combined with Bi-LSTM, the performance of multilingual parsing is significantly improved. Furthermore, we develop InDFormSFT, a pioneering supervised fine-tuning (SFT) industrial dataset that specifically addresses the parsing needs of forms in a variety of industrial contexts. Through rigorous testing on established benchmarks, XFormParser has demonstrated its unparalleled effectiveness and robustness. Compared to existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) models, XFormParser notably achieves up to 1.79% F1 score improvement on RE tasks in language-specific settings. It also exhibits exceptional improvements in cross-task performance in both multilingual and zero-shot settings.
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Co-authors
- Di Liang 3
- Peiyang Liu 3
- Minlong Peng 3
- Xingsheng Han 2
- Lei Jiang 2
- Shuang Liang 2
- Yu Lu 2
- Chao Xue 2
- Xianfu Cheng 1
- Xiangyuan Guan 1
- Tongliang Li 1
- Xiang Li 1
- Yuntao Li 1
- Zhoujun Li 1
- Zekai Lin 1
- Fei Liu 1
- Mengqiao Liu 1
- Xiaoyu Liu 1
- Yonghao Liu 1
- Chenyao Lu 1
- Li Miao 1
- Flora D. Salim 1
- Hongyu Shan 1
- Jiangrong Shen 1
- Haibo Shi 1
- Bob Simons 1
- Tao Sun 1
- Yao Wang 1
- Kui Wu 1
- Muling Wu 1
- Jian Yang 1
- Hang Zhang 1
- Weixiao Zhou 1