Moran Baruch


2025

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Efficient Decoding Methods for Language Models on Encrypted Data
Matan Avitan | Moran Baruch | Nir Drucker | Itamar Zimerman | Yoav Goldberg
Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing and the 4th Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

Large language models (LLMs) power modern AI applications, but processing sensitive data on untrusted servers raises privacy concerns. Homomorphic encryption (HE) enables computation on encrypted data for secure inference. However, neural text generation requires decoding methods like argmax and sampling, which are non-polynomial and thus computationally expensive under encryption, creating a significant performance bottleneck. We introduce cutmax, an HE-friendly argmax algorithm that reduces ciphertext operations compared to prior methods, enabling practical greedy decoding under encryption. We also propose the first HE-compatible nucleus (top-p) sampling method, leveraging cutmax for efficient stochastic decoding with provable privacy guarantees. Both techniques are polynomial, supporting efficient inference in privacy-preserving settings. Moreover, their differentiability facilitates gradient-based sequence-level optimization as a polynomial alternative to straight-through estimators. We further provide strong theoretical guarantees for cutmax, proving its convergence via exponential amplification of the gap ratio between the maximum and runner-up elements. Evaluations on realistic LLM outputs show latency reductions of 24×35× over baselines, advancing secure text generation.

2021

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Hebrew Psychological Lexicons
Natalie Shapira | Dana Atzil-Slonim | Daniel Juravski | Moran Baruch | Dana Stolowicz-Melman | Adar Paz | Tal Alfi-Yogev | Roy Azoulay | Adi Singer | Maayan Revivo | Chen Dahbash | Limor Dayan | Tamar Naim | Lidar Gez | Boaz Yanai | Adva Maman | Adam Nadaf | Elinor Sarfati | Amna Baloum | Tal Naor | Ephraim Mosenkis | Badreya Sarsour | Jany Gelfand Morgenshteyn | Yarden Elias | Liat Braun | Moria Rubin | Matan Kenigsbuch | Noa Bergwerk | Noam Yosef | Sivan Peled | Coral Avigdor | Rahav Obercyger | Rachel Mann | Tomer Alper | Inbal Beka | Ori Shapira | Yoav Goldberg
Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology: Improving Access

We introduce a large set of Hebrew lexicons pertaining to psychological aspects. These lexicons are useful for various psychology applications such as detecting emotional state, well being, relationship quality in conversation, identifying topics (e.g., family, work) and many more. We discuss the challenges in creating and validating lexicons in a new language, and highlight our methodological considerations in the data-driven lexicon construction process. Most of the lexicons are publicly available, which will facilitate further research on Hebrew clinical psychology text analysis. The lexicons were developed through data driven means, and verified by domain experts, clinical psychologists and psychology students, in a process of reconciliation with three judges. Development and verification relied on a dataset of a total of 872 psychotherapy session transcripts. We describe the construction process of each collection, the final resource and initial results of research studies employing this resource.