Bridging Technology and Humanities: Evaluating the Impact of Large Language Models on Social Sciences Research with DeepSeek-R1

In recent years, the development of Large Language Models (LLMs) has made significant breakthroughs in the field of natural language processing and has gradually been applied to the field of humanities and social sciences research. LLMs have a wide range of application value in the field of humanities and social sciences because of its strong text understanding, generation and reasoning capabilities. In humanities and social sciences research, LLMs can analyze large-scale text data and make inferences. This article analyzes the large language model DeepSeek-R1 from seven aspects: low-resource language translation, educational question-answering, student writing improvement in higher education, logical reasoning, educational measurement and psychometrics, public health policy analysis, and art education.Then we compare the answers given by DeepSeek-R1 in the seven aspects with the answers given by o1-preview. DeepSeek-R1 performs well in the humanities and social sciences, answering most questions correctly and logically, and can give reasonable analysis processes and explanations. Compared with o1-preview, it can automatically generate reasoning processes and provide more detailed explanations, which is suitable for beginners or people who need to have a detailed understanding of this knowledge, while o1-preview is more suitable for quick reading. Through analysis, it is found that LLM has broad application potential in the field of humanities and social sciences, and shows great advantages in improving text analysis efficiency, language communication and other fields. LLM's powerful language understanding and generation capabilities enable it to deeply explore complex problems in the field of humanities and social sciences, and provide innovative tools for academic research and practical applications.

Exploring 3D Activity Reasoning and Planning: From Implicit Human Intentions to Route-Aware Planning

3D activity reasoning and planning has attracted increasing attention in human-robot interaction and embodied AI thanks to the recent advance in multimodal learning. However, most existing works share two constraints: 1) heavy reliance on explicit instructions with little reasoning on implicit user intention; 2) negligence of inter-step route planning on robot moves. To bridge the gaps, we propose 3D activity reasoning and planning, a novel 3D task that reasons the intended activities from implicit instructions and decomposes them into steps with inter-step routes and planning under the guidance of fine-grained 3D object shapes and locations from scene segmentation. We tackle the new 3D task from two perspectives. First, we construct ReasonPlan3D, a large-scale benchmark that covers diverse 3D scenes with rich implicit instructions and detailed annotations for multi-step task planning, inter-step route planning, and fine-grained segmentation. Second, we design a novel framework that introduces progressive plan generation with contextual consistency across multiple steps, as well as a scene graph that is updated dynamically for capturing critical objects and their spatial relations. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our benchmark and framework in reasoning activities from implicit human instructions, producing accurate stepwise task plans, and seamlessly integrating route planning for multi-step moves. The dataset and code will be released.

Self-Supervised Transformers as Iterative Solution Improvers for Constraint Satisfaction

We present a Transformer-based framework for Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs). CSPs find use in many applications and thus accelerating their solution with machine learning is of wide interest. Most existing approaches rely on supervised learning from feasible solutions or reinforcement learning, paradigms that require either feasible solutions to these NP-Complete CSPs or large training budgets and a complex expert-designed reward signal. To address these challenges, we propose ConsFormer, a self-supervised framework that leverages a Transformer as a solution refiner. ConsFormer constructs a solution to a CSP iteratively in a process that mimics local search. Instead of using feasible solutions as labeled data, we devise differentiable approximations to the discrete constraints of a CSP to guide model training. Our model is trained to improve random assignments for a single step but is deployed iteratively at test time, circumventing the bottlenecks of supervised and reinforcement learning. Our method can tackle out-of-distribution CSPs simply through additional iterations.

GraphThought: Graph Combinatorial Optimization with Thought Generation

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities across various domains, especially in text processing and generative tasks. Recent advancements in the reasoning capabilities of state-of-the-art LLMs, such as OpenAI-o1, have significantly broadened their applicability, particularly in complex problem-solving and logical inference. However, most existing LLMs struggle with notable limitations in handling graph combinatorial optimization (GCO) problems. To bridge this gap, we formally define the Optimal Thoughts Design (OTD) problem, including its state and action thought space. We then introduce a novel framework, GraphThought, designed to generate high-quality thought datasets for GCO problems. Leveraging these datasets, we fine-tune the Llama-3-8B-Instruct model to develop Llama-GT. Notably, despite its compact 8B-parameter architecture, Llama-GT matches the performance of state-of-the-art LLMs on the GraphArena benchmark. Experimental results show that our approach outperforms both proprietary and open-source models, even rivaling specialized models like o1-mini. This work sets a new state-of-the-art benchmark while challenging the prevailing notion that model scale is the primary driver of reasoning capability.

Generative Multi-Agent Collaboration in Embodied AI: A Systematic Review

Embodied multi-agent systems (EMAS) have attracted growing attention for their potential to address complex, real-world challenges in areas such as logistics and robotics. Recent advances in foundation models pave the way for generative agents capable of richer communication and adaptive problem-solving. This survey provides a systematic examination of how EMAS can benefit from these generative capabilities. We propose a taxonomy that categorizes EMAS by system architectures and embodiment modalities, emphasizing how collaboration spans both physical and virtual contexts. Central building blocks, perception, planning, communication, and feedback, are then analyzed to illustrate how generative techniques bolster system robustness and flexibility. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the transformative effects of integrating foundation models into embodied, multi-agent frameworks. Finally, we discuss challenges and future directions, underlining the significant promise of EMAS to reshape the landscape of AI-driven collaboration.

GLTW: Joint Improved Graph Transformer and LLM via Three-Word Language for Knowledge Graph Completion

Knowledge Graph Completion (KGC), which aims to infer missing or incomplete facts, is a crucial task for KGs. However, integrating the vital structural information of KGs into Large Language Models (LLMs) and outputting predictions deterministically remains challenging. To address this, we propose a new method called GLTW, which encodes the structural information of KGs and merges it with LLMs to enhance KGC performance. Specifically, we introduce an improved Graph Transformer (iGT) that effectively encodes subgraphs with both local and global structural information and inherits the characteristics of language model, bypassing training from scratch. Also, we develop a subgraph-based multi-classification training objective, using all entities within KG as classification objects, to boost learning efficiency.Importantly, we combine iGT with an LLM that takes KG language prompts as input.Our extensive experiments on various KG datasets show that GLTW achieves significant performance gains compared to SOTA baselines.

A Survey of Automatic Prompt Engineering: An Optimization Perspective

The rise of foundation models has shifted focus from resource-intensive fine-tuning to prompt engineering, a paradigm that steers model behavior through input design rather than weight updates. While manual prompt engineering faces limitations in scalability, adaptability, and cross-modal alignment, automated methods, spanning foundation model (FM) based optimization, evolutionary methods, gradient-based optimization, and reinforcement learning, offer promising solutions. Existing surveys, however, remain fragmented across modalities and methodologies. This paper presents the first comprehensive survey on automated prompt engineering through a unified optimization-theoretic lens. We formalize prompt optimization as a maximization problem over discrete, continuous, and hybrid prompt spaces, systematically organizing methods by their optimization variables (instructions, soft prompts, exemplars), task-specific objectives, and computational frameworks. By bridging theoretical formulation with practical implementations across text, vision, and multimodal domains, this survey establishes a foundational framework for both researchers and practitioners, while highlighting underexplored frontiers in constrained optimization and agent-oriented prompt design.

SkyRover: A Modular Simulator for Cross-Domain Pathfinding

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) increasingly collaborate in logistics, surveillance, inspection tasks and etc. However, existing simulators often focus on a single domain, limiting cross-domain study. This paper presents the SkyRover, a modular simulator for UAV-AGV multi-agent pathfinding (MAPF). SkyRover supports realistic agent dynamics, configurable 3D environments, and convenient APIs for external solvers and learning methods. By unifying ground and aerial operations, it facilitates cross-domain algorithm design, testing, and benchmarking. Experiments highlight SkyRover's capacity for efficient pathfinding and high-fidelity simulations in UAV-AGV coordination. Project is available at https://sites.google.com/view/mapf3d/home.

TrackDiffuser: Nearly Model-Free Bayesian Filtering with Diffusion Model

State estimation remains a fundamental challenge across numerous domains, from autonomous driving, aircraft tracking to quantum system control. Although Bayesian filtering has been the cornerstone solution, its classical model-based paradigm faces two major limitations: it struggles with inaccurate state space model (SSM) and requires extensive prior knowledge of noise characteristics. We present TrackDiffuser, a generative framework addressing both challenges by reformulating Bayesian filtering as a conditional diffusion model. Our approach implicitly learns system dynamics from data to mitigate the effects of inaccurate SSM, while simultaneously circumventing the need for explicit measurement models and noise priors by establishing a direct relationship between measurements and states. Through an implicit predict-and-update mechanism, TrackDiffuser preserves the interpretability advantage of traditional model-based filtering methods. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our framework substantially outperforms both classical and contemporary hybrid methods, especially in challenging non-linear scenarios involving non-Gaussian noises. Notably, TrackDiffuser exhibits remarkable robustness to SSM inaccuracies, offering a practical solution for real-world state estimation problems where perfect models and prior knowledge are unavailable.

Verbalized Bayesian Persuasion

Information design (ID) explores how a sender influence the optimal behavior of receivers to achieve specific objectives. While ID originates from everyday human communication, existing game-theoretic and machine learning methods often model information structures as numbers, which limits many applications to toy games. This work leverages LLMs and proposes a verbalized framework in Bayesian persuasion (BP), which extends classic BP to real-world games involving human dialogues for the first time. Specifically, we map the BP to a verbalized mediator-augmented extensive-form game, where LLMs instantiate the sender and receiver. To efficiently solve the verbalized game, we propose a generalized equilibrium-finding algorithm combining LLM and game solver. The algorithm is reinforced with techniques including verbalized commitment assumptions, verbalized obedience constraints, and information obfuscation. Numerical experiments in dialogue scenarios, such as recommendation letters, courtroom interactions, and law enforcement, validate that our framework can both reproduce theoretical results in classic BP and discover effective persuasion strategies in more complex natural language and multi-stage scenarios.