A Survey on LLM Test-Time Compute via Search: Tasks, LLM Profiling, Search Algorithms, and Relevant Frameworks

LLM test-time compute (or LLM inference) via search has emerged as a promising research area with rapid developments. However, current frameworks often adopt distinct perspectives on three key aspects (task definition, LLM profiling, and search procedures), making direct comparisons challenging. Moreover, the search algorithms employed often diverge from standard implementations, and their specific characteristics are not thoroughly specified. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive technical review that unifies task definitions and provides modular definitions of LLM profiling and search procedures. The definitions enable precise comparisons of various LLM inference frameworks while highlighting their departures from conventional search algorithms. We also discuss the applicability, performance, and efficiency of these methods. For further details and ongoing updates, please refer to our GitHub repository: https://github.com/xinzhel/LLM-Agent-Survey/blob/main/search.md

PersonaMagic: Stage-Regulated High-Fidelity Face Customization with Tandem Equilibrium

Personalized image generation has made significant strides in adapting content to novel concepts. However, a persistent challenge remains: balancing the accurate reconstruction of unseen concepts with the need for editability according to the prompt, especially when dealing with the complex nuances of facial features. In this study, we delve into the temporal dynamics of the text-to-image conditioning process, emphasizing the crucial role of stage partitioning in introducing new concepts. We present PersonaMagic, a stage-regulated generative technique designed for high-fidelity face customization. Using a simple MLP network, our method learns a series of embeddings within a specific timestep interval to capture face concepts. Additionally, we develop a Tandem Equilibrium mechanism that adjusts self-attention responses in the text encoder, balancing text description and identity preservation, improving both areas. Extensive experiments confirm the superiority of PersonaMagic over state-of-the-art methods in both qualitative and quantitative evaluations. Moreover, its robustness and flexibility are validated in non-facial domains, and it can also serve as a valuable plug-in for enhancing the performance of pretrained personalization models.

D$^4$-VTON: Dynamic Semantics Disentangling for Differential Diffusion based Virtual Try-On

In this paper, we introduce D$^4$-VTON, an innovative solution for image-based virtual try-on. We address challenges from previous studies, such as semantic inconsistencies before and after garment warping, and reliance on static, annotation-driven clothing parsers. Additionally, we tackle the complexities in diffusion-based VTON models when handling simultaneous tasks like inpainting and denoising. Our approach utilizes two key technologies: Firstly, Dynamic Semantics Disentangling Modules (DSDMs) extract abstract semantic information from garments to create distinct local flows, improving precise garment warping in a self-discovered manner. Secondly, by integrating a Differential Information Tracking Path (DITP), we establish a novel diffusion-based VTON paradigm. This path captures differential information between incomplete try-on inputs and their complete versions, enabling the network to handle multiple degradations independently, thereby minimizing learning ambiguities and achieving realistic results with minimal overhead. Extensive experiments demonstrate that D$^4$-VTON significantly outperforms existing methods in both quantitative metrics and qualitative evaluations, demonstrating its capability in generating realistic images and ensuring semantic consistency.

A Survey on LLM-Based Agents: Common Workflows and Reusable LLM-Profiled Components

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have catalyzed the development of sophisticated frameworks for developing LLM-based agents. However, the complexity of these frameworks r poses a hurdle for nuanced differentiation at a granular level, a critical aspect for enabling efficient implementations across different frameworks and fostering future research. Hence, the primary purpose of this survey is to facilitate a cohesive understanding of diverse recently proposed frameworks by identifying common workflows and reusable LLM-Profiled Components (LMPCs).

A Survey on LLM-Based Agentic Workflows and LLM-Profiled Components

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have catalyzed the development of sophisticated agentic workflows, offering improvements over traditional single-path, Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting techniques. This survey summarize the common workflows, with the particular focus on LLM-Profiled Components (LMPCs) and ignorance of non-LLM components. The reason behind such exploration is to facilitate a clearer understanding of LLM roles and see how reusabile of the LMPCs.

Rethinking ChatGPT's Success: Usability and Cognitive Behaviors Enabled by Auto-regressive LLMs' Prompting

Over the last decade, a wide range of training and deployment strategies for Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged. Among these, the prompting paradigms of Auto-regressive LLMs (AR-LLMs) have catalyzed a significant surge in Artificial Intelligence (AI). This paper aims to emphasize the significance of utilizing free-form modalities (forms of input and output) and verbal free-form contexts as user-directed channels (methods for transforming modalities) for downstream deployment. Specifically, we analyze the structure of modalities within both two types of LLMs and six task-specific channels during deployment. From the perspective of users, our analysis introduces and applies the analytical metrics of task customizability, transparency, and complexity to gauge their usability, highlighting the superior nature of AR-LLMs' prompting paradigms. Moreover, we examine the stimulation of diverse cognitive behaviors in LLMs through the adoption of free-form text and verbal contexts, mirroring human linguistic expressions of such behaviors. We then detail four common cognitive behaviors to underscore how AR-LLMs' prompting successfully imitate human-like behaviors using this free-form modality and channel. Lastly, the potential for improving LLM deployment, both as autonomous agents and within multi-agent systems, is identified via cognitive behavior concepts and principles.

GRAMMAR: Grounded and Modular Methodology for Assessment of Domain-Specific Retrieval-Augmented Language Model

Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG) systems have been actively studied and deployed across various industries to query on domain-specific knowledge base. However, evaluating these systems presents unique challenges due to the scarcity of domain-specific queries and corresponding ground truths, as well as a lack of systematic approaches to diagnosing the cause of failure cases -- whether they stem from knowledge deficits or issues related to system robustness. To address these challenges, we introduce GRAMMAR (GRounded And Modular Methodology for Assessment of RAG), an evaluation framework comprising two key elements: 1) a data generation process that leverages relational databases and LLMs to efficiently produce scalable query-answer pairs. This method facilitates the separation of query logic from linguistic variations for enhanced debugging capabilities; and 2) an evaluation framework that differentiates knowledge gaps from robustness and enables the identification of defective modules. Our empirical results underscore the limitations of current reference-free evaluation approaches and the reliability of GRAMMAR to accurately identify model vulnerabilities.

One-for-All: Towards Universal Domain Translation with a Single StyleGAN

In this paper, we propose a novel translation model, UniTranslator, for transforming representations between visually distinct domains under conditions of limited training data and significant visual differences. The main idea behind our approach is leveraging the domain-neutral capabilities of CLIP as a bridging mechanism, while utilizing a separate module to extract abstract, domain-agnostic semantics from the embeddings of both the source and target realms. Fusing these abstract semantics with target-specific semantics results in a transformed embedding within the CLIP space. To bridge the gap between the disparate worlds of CLIP and StyleGAN, we introduce a new non-linear mapper, the CLIP2P mapper. Utilizing CLIP embeddings, this module is tailored to approximate the latent distribution in the P space, effectively acting as a connector between these two spaces. The proposed UniTranslator is versatile and capable of performing various tasks, including style mixing, stylization, and translations, even in visually challenging scenarios across different visual domains. Notably, UniTranslator generates high-quality translations that showcase domain relevance, diversity, and improved image quality. UniTranslator surpasses the performance of existing general-purpose models and performs well against specialized models in representative tasks. The source code and trained models will be released to the public.

Make Text Unlearnable: Exploiting Effective Patterns to Protect Personal Data

This paper addresses the ethical concerns arising from the use of unauthorized public data in deep learning models and proposes a novel solution. Specifically, building on the work of Huang et al. (2021), we extend their bi-level optimization approach to generate unlearnable text using a gradient-based search technique. However, although effective, this approach faces practical limitations, including the requirement of batches of instances and model architecture knowledge that is not readily accessible to ordinary users with limited access to their own data. Furthermore, even with semantic-preserving constraints, unlearnable noise can alter the text's semantics. To address these challenges, we extract simple patterns from unlearnable text produced by bi-level optimization and demonstrate that the data remains unlearnable for unknown models. Additionally, these patterns are not instance- or dataset-specific, allowing users to readily apply them to text classification and question-answering tasks, even if only a small proportion of users implement them on their public content. We also open-source codes to generate unlearnable text and assess unlearnable noise to benefit the public and future studies.

A Survey on Out-of-Distribution Evaluation of Neural NLP Models

Adversarial robustness, domain generalization and dataset biases are three active lines of research contributing to out-of-distribution (OOD) evaluation on neural NLP models. However, a comprehensive, integrated discussion of the three research lines is still lacking in the literature. In this survey, we 1) compare the three lines of research under a unifying definition; 2) summarize the data-generating processes and evaluation protocols for each line of research; and 3) emphasize the challenges and opportunities for future work.