Large language model (LLM) decoding involves generating a sequence of tokens based on a given context, where each token is predicted one at a time using the model's learned probabilities. The typical autoregressive decoding method requires a separate forward pass through the model for each token generated, which is computationally inefficient and poses challenges for deploying LLMs in latency-sensitive scenarios. The main limitations of current decoding methods stem from their inefficiencies and resource demands. Existing approaches either necessitate fine-tuning smaller models, which is resource-intensive, or relying on fixed retrieval schemes to construct drafts for the next tokens, which lack adaptability and fail to generalize across different models and contexts. To address these issues, we introduce a novel methodology called Adaptix, which accelerates LLM decoding without requiring fine-tuning. Our approach involves an adaptive draft-verification process that evolves over time to improve efficiency. We utilize a tri-gram matrix-based LLM representation to dynamically approximate the output distribution of the LLM, allowing the model to adjust to changing token probabilities during the decoding process. Additionally, we implement a draft construction mechanism that effectively balances exploration and exploitation, ensuring that the drafts generated are both diverse and close to the true output distribution of the LLM. The importance of this design lies in its ability to optimize the draft distribution adaptively, leading to faster and more accurate decoding. Through extensive experiments on various benchmark datasets and LLM architectures, we demonstrate that Adaptix significantly accelerates the decoding process while maintaining high accuracy, making it suitable for deployment in a wide range of practical applications.

The potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) in education is not trivial, but concerns about academic misconduct, misinformation, and overreliance limit their adoption. To address these issues, we introduce MerryQuery, an AI-powered educational assistant using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), to provide contextually relevant, course-specific responses. MerryQuery features guided dialogues and source citation to ensure trust and improve student learning. Additionally, it enables instructors to monitor student interactions, customize response granularity, and input multimodal materials without compromising data fidelity. By meeting both student and instructor needs, MerryQuery offers a responsible way to integrate LLMs into educational settings.

In the rapidly evolving field of legal analytics, finding relevant cases and accurately predicting judicial outcomes are challenging because of the complexity of legal language, which often includes specialized terminology, complex syntax, and historical context. Moreover, the subtle distinctions between similar and precedent cases require a deep understanding of legal knowledge. Researchers often conflate these concepts, making it difficult to develop specialized techniques to effectively address these nuanced tasks. In this paper, we introduce the Law Large Language Model (LawLLM), a multi-task model specifically designed for the US legal domain to address these challenges. LawLLM excels at Similar Case Retrieval (SCR), Precedent Case Recommendation (PCR), and Legal Judgment Prediction (LJP). By clearly distinguishing between precedent and similar cases, we provide essential clarity, guiding future research in developing specialized strategies for these tasks. We propose customized data preprocessing techniques for each task that transform raw legal data into a trainable format. Furthermore, we also use techniques such as in-context learning (ICL) and advanced information retrieval methods in LawLLM. The evaluation results demonstrate that LawLLM consistently outperforms existing baselines in both zero-shot and few-shot scenarios, offering unparalleled multi-task capabilities and filling critical gaps in the legal domain. Code and data are available at https://github.com/Tizzzzy/Law_LLM.

The meat grinder with CPFU (Capacitive Pulse Forming Unit) circuit is a latest pulse-compression circuit for pulsed power applications. However, one imperfection of this circuit is that it does not solve the residual energy recovery problem, i.e., to recover and reuse the residual energy after one operation. This paper presents a theoretically feasible solution by making a small but effective modification to the meat grinder with CPFU circuit. The working principle of the new circuit is illustrated stage by stage. According to numerical simulations, the overall energy recovery efficiency can reach 87% in theory.