Yikang Liu

About me

Hi, I'm Yikang, a first-year graduate student of computational linguistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). I am currently advised by Hai Hu. Before that, I received my B.A. in English and Minor B.Eng. in CS from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST).

I loved stories of The Lord of the Rings when I was a child. Then I came to know that J.R.R Tolkien was a philologist, which inspired me to learn English. During my first year as an undergraduate, I realized that language can go beyond literature and philology. One can look into language by building computational models, from perspectives of science and engineering. Thus I started a minor program in computer science.

Currently, my research focuses on building multilingual linguistic benchmarks to evaluate and probe LLMs. Next step, I might adopt methods in the nascent field of mechanistic interpretability, trying to understand the mechanism of LLMs with linguistic testsuites.

For my daily hobbies, I like to play the violin and listen to classical music, especially symphonies and violin concerto. I was once a violin player in the student ochestra of HUST, performing a New Year Concert in the magnificant Qintai Symphony Hall in Wuhan!

Experience

Damo Academy, Alibaba Hangzhou, China
Research Intern at Tongyi Lab 2024.07 - Now
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai, China
M.A. in Computational Linguistics 2023.09 - Now
Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan, China
B.A. in English Language and Literature 2019.09 - 2023.06
B.Eng. in Computer Science (Minor) 2021.02 - 2023.06

Publications

MELA: multilingual evaluation of linguistic acceptability
Ziyin Zhang*, Yikang Liu*, Weifang Huang, Junyu Mao, Rui Wang, Hai Hu (*Equal contribution)
[ACL 2024] [paper] [data]

This is my very first paper submitted to and accepted by ACL. We proposed a multilingual benchmark on linguistic acceptability, covering 10 languages. I probed XLM-R models fine-tuned on MELA and ran LLM evaluations. It is a good start of my academic career!

Can local ecological knowledge establish conservation baselines for the Critically Endangered Blue-crowned Laughingthrush?
Rosalind A. Gleave, Sarah K. Papworth, David Bauman, Steven J. Portugal, Weiwei Zhang, Yikang Liu, Zhiming Cao, Xiaojin Cheng, Samuel T. Turvey
[People and Nature, 2024] [paper]

I took part in this project at the age of 17, doing field work in Wuyuan, Jiangxi, China, collecting ecological data, something like doing questionnaires with local farmers and measuring the height and width of trees. By the way, my father is a bird keeper of BCLT in the zoo...

ArguGPT: evaluating, understanding and identifying argumentative essays generated by GPT models
Yikang Liu, Ziyin Zhang, Wanyang Zhang, Shisen Yue, Xiaojing Zhao, Xinyuan Cheng, Yiwen Zhang, Hai Hu
[preprint, 2023] [paper] [data] [demo]

This was a timely work beginning just two months after the release of ChatGPT. We collected argumentative essays generated by GPT models, evaluated these essays from various aspects, and trained classifiers to detect GPT-generated essays. This paper earned me an Honor Undergraduate Thesis!