new

Get trending papers in your email inbox!

Subscribe

Daily Papers

byAK and the research community

Sep 10

Opus: A Large Work Model for Complex Workflow Generation

This paper introduces Opus, a novel framework for generating and optimizing Workflows tailored to complex Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) use cases, focusing on cost reduction and quality enhancement while adhering to established industry processes and operational constraints. Our approach generates executable Workflows from Intention, defined as the alignment of Client Input, Client Output, and Process Context. These Workflows are represented as Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), with nodes as Tasks consisting of sequences of executable Instructions, including tools and human expert reviews. We adopt a two-phase methodology: Workflow Generation and Workflow Optimization. In the Generation phase, Workflows are generated using a Large Work Model (LWM) informed by a Work Knowledge Graph (WKG) that encodes domain-specific procedural and operational knowledge. In the Optimization phase, Workflows are transformed into Workflow Graphs (WFGs), where optimal Workflows are determined through path optimization. Our experiments demonstrate that state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) face challenges in reliably retrieving detailed process data as well as generating industry-compliant workflows. The key contributions of this paper include: - The integration of a Work Knowledge Graph (WKG) into a Large Work Model (LWM), enabling the generation of context-aware, semantically aligned, structured and auditable Workflows. - A two-phase approach that combines Workflow Generation from Intention with graph-based Workflow Optimization. - Opus Alpha 1 Large and Opus Alpha 1 Small, models that outperform state-of-the-art LLMs by 38\% and 29\% respectively in Workflow Generation for a Medical Coding use case.

Iterative Service-Learning: A Computing-Based Case-study Applied to Small Rural Organizations

This paper describes the iterative use of service learning to develop, review, and improve computing-based artifacts. It is well-known that computing students benefit from service-learning experiences as do the community partners. It is also well-known that computing artifacts rarely function well long-term without versioning and updates. Service-learning projects are often one-time engagements, completed by single teams of students over the course of a semester course. This limits the benefit for community partners that do not have the expertise or resources to review and update a project on their own. Over several years, teams of undergraduate students in a capstone course created tailored social media plans for numerous small rural organizations. The projects were required to meet client specific needs, with identified audiences, measurable goals, and strategies and tactics to reach the identified goals. This paper builds on previously results for 60 projects conducted over several years. Nine clients were selected to participate in the iterative follow-up process, where new student teams conducted client interviews, reviewed the initial plans, and analyzed metrics from the current strategies and tactics to provide updated, improved artifacts. Using ABET learning objectives as a basis, clients reviewed the student teams and artifacts. This longitudinal study discusses the impact of this intervention to increase implementation and sustained use rates of computing artifacts developed through service learning. Both students and clients reported high satisfaction levels, and clients were particularly satisfied with the iterative improvement process. This research demonstrates an innovative practice for creating and maintaining computing artifacts through iterative service learning, while addressing the resource constraints of small organizations.

Detection of Compromised Functions in a Serverless Cloud Environment

Serverless computing is an emerging cloud paradigm with serverless functions at its core. While serverless environments enable software developers to focus on developing applications without the need to actively manage the underlying runtime infrastructure, they open the door to a wide variety of security threats that can be challenging to mitigate with existing methods. Existing security solutions do not apply to all serverless architectures, since they require significant modifications to the serverless infrastructure or rely on third-party services for the collection of more detailed data. In this paper, we present an extendable serverless security threat detection model that leverages cloud providers' native monitoring tools to detect anomalous behavior in serverless applications. Our model aims to detect compromised serverless functions by identifying post-exploitation abnormal behavior related to different types of attacks on serverless functions, and therefore, it is a last line of defense. Our approach is not tied to any specific serverless application, is agnostic to the type of threats, and is adaptable through model adjustments. To evaluate our model's performance, we developed a serverless cybersecurity testbed in an AWS cloud environment, which includes two different serverless applications and simulates a variety of attack scenarios that cover the main security threats faced by serverless functions. Our evaluation demonstrates our model's ability to detect all implemented attacks while maintaining a negligible false alarm rate.

Root Cause Analysis In Microservice Using Neural Granger Causal Discovery

In recent years, microservices have gained widespread adoption in IT operations due to their scalability, maintenance, and flexibility. However, it becomes challenging for site reliability engineers (SREs) to pinpoint the root cause due to the complex relationships in microservices when facing system malfunctions. Previous research employed structured learning methods (e.g., PC-algorithm) to establish causal relationships and derive root causes from causal graphs. Nevertheless, they ignored the temporal order of time series data and failed to leverage the rich information inherent in the temporal relationships. For instance, in cases where there is a sudden spike in CPU utilization, it can lead to an increase in latency for other microservices. However, in this scenario, the anomaly in CPU utilization occurs before the latency increase, rather than simultaneously. As a result, the PC-algorithm fails to capture such characteristics. To address these challenges, we propose RUN, a novel approach for root cause analysis using neural Granger causal discovery with contrastive learning. RUN enhances the backbone encoder by integrating contextual information from time series, and leverages a time series forecasting model to conduct neural Granger causal discovery. In addition, RUN incorporates Pagerank with a personalization vector to efficiently recommend the top-k root causes. Extensive experiments conducted on the synthetic and real-world microservice-based datasets demonstrate that RUN noticeably outperforms the state-of-the-art root cause analysis methods. Moreover, we provide an analysis scenario for the sock-shop case to showcase the practicality and efficacy of RUN in microservice-based applications. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/zmlin1998/RUN.

Spider2-V: How Far Are Multimodal Agents From Automating Data Science and Engineering Workflows?

Data science and engineering workflows often span multiple stages, from warehousing to orchestration, using tools like BigQuery, dbt, and Airbyte. As vision language models (VLMs) advance in multimodal understanding and code generation, VLM-based agents could potentially automate these workflows by generating SQL queries, Python code, and GUI operations. This automation can improve the productivity of experts while democratizing access to large-scale data analysis. In this paper, we introduce Spider2-V, the first multimodal agent benchmark focusing on professional data science and engineering workflows, featuring 494 real-world tasks in authentic computer environments and incorporating 20 enterprise-level professional applications. These tasks, derived from real-world use cases, evaluate the ability of a multimodal agent to perform data-related tasks by writing code and managing the GUI in enterprise data software systems. To balance realistic simulation with evaluation simplicity, we devote significant effort to developing automatic configurations for task setup and carefully crafting evaluation metrics for each task. Furthermore, we supplement multimodal agents with comprehensive documents of these enterprise data software systems. Our empirical evaluation reveals that existing state-of-the-art LLM/VLM-based agents do not reliably automate full data workflows (14.0% success). Even with step-by-step guidance, these agents still underperform in tasks that require fine-grained, knowledge-intensive GUI actions (16.2%) and involve remote cloud-hosted workspaces (10.6%). We hope that Spider2-V paves the way for autonomous multimodal agents to transform the automation of data science and engineering workflow. Our code and data are available at https://spider2-v.github.io.

LLM as OS, Agents as Apps: Envisioning AIOS, Agents and the AIOS-Agent Ecosystem

This paper envisions a revolutionary AIOS-Agent ecosystem, where Large Language Model (LLM) serves as the (Artificial) Intelligent Operating System (IOS, or AIOS)--an operating system "with soul". Upon this foundation, a diverse range of LLM-based AI Agent Applications (Agents, or AAPs) are developed, enriching the AIOS-Agent ecosystem and signaling a paradigm shift from the traditional OS-APP ecosystem. We envision that LLM's impact will not be limited to the AI application level, instead, it will in turn revolutionize the design and implementation of computer system, architecture, software, and programming language, featured by several main concepts: LLM as OS (system-level), Agents as Applications (application-level), Natural Language as Programming Interface (user-level), and Tools as Devices/Libraries (hardware/middleware-level). We begin by introducing the architecture of traditional OS. Then we formalize a conceptual framework for AIOS through "LLM as OS (LLMOS)", drawing analogies between AIOS and traditional OS: LLM is likened to OS kernel, context window to memory, external storage to file system, hardware tools to peripheral devices, software tools to programming libraries, and user prompts to user commands. Subsequently, we introduce the new AIOS-Agent Ecosystem, where users can easily program Agent Applications (AAPs) using natural language, democratizing the development of software, which is different from the traditional OS-APP ecosystem. Following this, we explore the diverse scope of Agent Applications. We delve into both single-agent and multi-agent systems, as well as human-agent interaction. Lastly, drawing on the insights from traditional OS-APP ecosystem, we propose a roadmap for the evolution of the AIOS-Agent ecosystem. This roadmap is designed to guide the future research and development, suggesting systematic progresses of AIOS and its Agent applications.

ACECode: A Reinforcement Learning Framework for Aligning Code Efficiency and Correctness in Code Language Models

CodeLLMs have demonstrated remarkable advancements in software engineering tasks. However, while these models can generate functionally correct code, they often produce code that is inefficient in terms of runtime. This inefficiency is particularly problematic in resource-constrained environments, impacting software performance and sustainability. Existing approaches for optimizing code efficiency for CodeLLMs like SOAP and PIE exhibit certain limitations. SOAP requires a compatible execution environment and predefined test cases for iterative code modification, while PIE focuses on instruction tuning, improving efficiency but compromising correctness. These shortcomings highlight the need for a fine-tuning framework that optimizes both efficiency and correctness without relying on predefined test cases or specific execution environments. To bridge this gap, we introduce ACECode, a reinforcement learning-based fine-tuning framework that aligns CodeLLMs with dual objectives of efficiency and correctness. ACECode combines three key steps: (1) generating code with an actor CodeLLM, (2) calculating a training-free reward signal derived from code execution feedback for each generated code, and (3) optimizing the CodeLLM via Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithm. This reward signal enables joint assessment of efficiency and correctness without manual labeling. We evaluate ACECode by fine-tuning four SOTA (state-of-the-art) CodeLLMs and comparing their code with three baselines: original, instruction-tuned, and PIE-tuned CodeLLMs. Extensive experiment results suggest that significantly improves the efficiency and correctness of generated code against all baselines for all CodeLLMs. Specifically, CodeLLMs fine-tuned with ACECode improve pass@1 by 1.84% to 14.51% and reduce runtime in 65% to 72% of cases compared to original CodeLLMs.

APEX: An Extensible and Dynamism-Aware Simulator for Automated Parallel Execution in LLM Serving

Efficiently serving Large Language Models (LLMs) requires selecting an optimal parallel execution plan, balancing computation, memory, and communication overhead. However, determining the best strategy is challenging due to varying parallelism techniques (data, pipeline, tensor) and workload characteristics (e.g., compute-intensive tasks with long prompts vs. memory-intensive tasks with long generation). We propose APEX, an LLM serving system simulator that efficiently identifies optimal parallel execution plans by considering key factors of LLM serving systems, such as memory usage, batching behavior, etc. APEX performs dynamism-aware simulation to model iteration-level batching, and leverages LLMs' repetitive structure to reduce design space, scaling efficiently to trillion-scale models. APEX abstracts the key components of LLM serving systems, including the model, batching module, quantization formats, and device clusters, enabling the simulator to be general and extensible. Simulating on a CPU, APEX evaluates execution plans for various device clusters, covering diverse LLMs and workloads. APEX finds plans up to 3.37x faster than heuristics, and also plans that reduce energy consumption by up to 45% compared to latency-optimal plans. APEX performs comprehensive evaluations, reporting key system metrics like time per output token and time to first token, which can help service providers meet SLOs. APEX identifies an optimal plan within 15 minutes on a CPU, making it 71x faster and 1234x more cost-effective than cloud-based GPU deployment. APEX can be accessed at https://github.com/microsoft/apex_plus

Agentic Web: Weaving the Next Web with AI Agents

The emergence of AI agents powered by large language models (LLMs) marks a pivotal shift toward the Agentic Web, a new phase of the internet defined by autonomous, goal-driven interactions. In this paradigm, agents interact directly with one another to plan, coordinate, and execute complex tasks on behalf of users. This transition from human-driven to machine-to-machine interaction allows intent to be delegated, relieving users from routine digital operations and enabling a more interactive, automated web experience. In this paper, we present a structured framework for understanding and building the Agentic Web. We trace its evolution from the PC and Mobile Web eras and identify the core technological foundations that support this shift. Central to our framework is a conceptual model consisting of three key dimensions: intelligence, interaction, and economics. These dimensions collectively enable the capabilities of AI agents, such as retrieval, recommendation, planning, and collaboration. We analyze the architectural and infrastructural challenges involved in creating scalable agentic systems, including communication protocols, orchestration strategies, and emerging paradigms such as the Agent Attention Economy. We conclude by discussing the potential applications, societal risks, and governance issues posed by agentic systems, and outline research directions for developing open, secure, and intelligent ecosystems shaped by both human intent and autonomous agent behavior. A continuously updated collection of relevant studies for agentic web is available at: https://github.com/SafeRL-Lab/agentic-web.

SQUASH: Serverless and Distributed Quantization-based Attributed Vector Similarity Search

Vector similarity search presents significant challenges in terms of scalability for large and high-dimensional datasets, as well as in providing native support for hybrid queries. Serverless computing and cloud functions offer attractive benefits such as elasticity and cost-effectiveness, but are difficult to apply to data-intensive workloads. Jointly addressing these two main challenges, we present SQUASH, the first fully serverless vector search solution with rich support for hybrid queries. It features OSQ, an optimized and highly parallelizable quantization-based approach for vectors and attributes. Its segment-based storage mechanism enables significant compression in resource-constrained settings and offers efficient dimensional extraction operations. SQUASH performs a single distributed pass to guarantee the return of sufficiently many vectors satisfying the filter predicate, achieving high accuracy and avoiding redundant computation for vectors which fail the predicate. A multi-level search workflow is introduced to prune most vectors early to minimize the load on Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) instances. SQUASH is designed to identify and utilize retention of relevant data in re-used runtime containers, which eliminates redundant I/O and reduces costs. Finally, we demonstrate a new tree-based method for rapid FaaS invocation, enabling the bi-directional flow of data via request/response payloads. Experiments comparing SQUASH with state-of-the-art serverless vector search solutions and server-based baselines on vector search benchmarks confirm significant performance improvements at a lower cost.

Parrot: Efficient Serving of LLM-based Applications with Semantic Variable

The rise of large language models (LLMs) has enabled LLM-based applications (a.k.a. AI agents or co-pilots), a new software paradigm that combines the strength of LLM and conventional software. Diverse LLM applications from different tenants could design complex workflows using multiple LLM requests to accomplish one task. However, they have to use the over-simplified request-level API provided by today's public LLM services, losing essential application-level information. Public LLM services have to blindly optimize individual LLM requests, leading to sub-optimal end-to-end performance of LLM applications. This paper introduces Parrot, an LLM service system that focuses on the end-to-end experience of LLM-based applications. Parrot proposes Semantic Variable, a unified abstraction to expose application-level knowledge to public LLM services. A Semantic Variable annotates an input/output variable in the prompt of a request, and creates the data pipeline when connecting multiple LLM requests, providing a natural way to program LLM applications. Exposing Semantic Variables to the public LLM service allows it to perform conventional data flow analysis to uncover the correlation across multiple LLM requests. This correlation opens a brand-new optimization space for the end-to-end performance of LLM-based applications. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that Parrot can achieve up to an order-of-magnitude improvement for popular and practical use cases of LLM applications.

Vibe Coding vs. Agentic Coding: Fundamentals and Practical Implications of Agentic AI

This review presents a comprehensive analysis of two emerging paradigms in AI-assisted software development: vibe coding and agentic coding. While both leverage large language models (LLMs), they differ fundamentally in autonomy, architectural design, and the role of the developer. Vibe coding emphasizes intuitive, human-in-the-loop interaction through prompt-based, conversational workflows that support ideation, experimentation, and creative exploration. In contrast, agentic coding enables autonomous software development through goal-driven agents capable of planning, executing, testing, and iterating tasks with minimal human intervention. We propose a detailed taxonomy spanning conceptual foundations, execution models, feedback loops, safety mechanisms, debugging strategies, and real-world tool ecosystems. Through comparative workflow analysis and 20 detailed use cases, we illustrate how vibe systems thrive in early-stage prototyping and education, while agentic systems excel in enterprise-grade automation, codebase refactoring, and CI/CD integration. We further examine emerging trends in hybrid architectures, where natural language interfaces are coupled with autonomous execution pipelines. Finally, we articulate a future roadmap for agentic AI, outlining the infrastructure needed for trustworthy, explainable, and collaborative systems. Our findings suggest that successful AI software engineering will rely not on choosing one paradigm, but on harmonizing their strengths within a unified, human-centered development lifecycle.

Beyond Efficiency: A Systematic Survey of Resource-Efficient Large Language Models

The burgeoning field of Large Language Models (LLMs), exemplified by sophisticated models like OpenAI's ChatGPT, represents a significant advancement in artificial intelligence. These models, however, bring forth substantial challenges in the high consumption of computational, memory, energy, and financial resources, especially in environments with limited resource capabilities. This survey aims to systematically address these challenges by reviewing a broad spectrum of techniques designed to enhance the resource efficiency of LLMs. We categorize methods based on their optimization focus: computational, memory, energy, financial, and network resources and their applicability across various stages of an LLM's lifecycle, including architecture design, pretraining, finetuning, and system design. Additionally, the survey introduces a nuanced categorization of resource efficiency techniques by their specific resource types, which uncovers the intricate relationships and mappings between various resources and corresponding optimization techniques. A standardized set of evaluation metrics and datasets is also presented to facilitate consistent and fair comparisons across different models and techniques. By offering a comprehensive overview of the current sota and identifying open research avenues, this survey serves as a foundational reference for researchers and practitioners, aiding them in developing more sustainable and efficient LLMs in a rapidly evolving landscape.

BurstGPT: A Real-world Workload Dataset to Optimize LLM Serving Systems

Serving systems for Large Language Models (LLMs) are often optimized to improve quality of service (QoS) and throughput. However, due to the lack of open-source LLM serving workloads, these systems are frequently evaluated under unrealistic workload assumptions. Consequently, performance may degrade when systems are deployed in real-world scenarios. This work presents BurstGPT, an LLM serving workload with 10.31 million traces from regional Azure OpenAI GPT services over 213 days. BurstGPT captures LLM serving characteristics from user, model and system perspectives: (1) User request concurrency: burstiness variations of requests in Azure OpenAI GPT services, revealing diversified concurrency patterns in different services and model types. (2) User conversation patterns: counts and intervals within conversations for service optimizations. (3) Model response lengths: auto-regressive serving processes of GPT models, showing statistical relations between requests and their responses. (4) System response failures: failures of conversation and API services, showing intensive resource needs and limited availability of LLM services in Azure. The details of the characteristics can serve multiple purposes in LLM serving optimizations, such as system evaluation and trace provisioning. In our demo evaluation with BurstGPT, frequent variations in BurstGPT reveal declines in efficiency, stability, or reliability in realistic LLM serving. We identify that the generalization of KV cache management, scheduling and disaggregation optimizations can be improved under realistic workload evaluations. BurstGPT is publicly available now at https://github.com/HPMLL/BurstGPT and is widely used to develop prototypes of LLM serving frameworks in the industry.

Efficient and Green Large Language Models for Software Engineering: Vision and the Road Ahead

Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently shown remarkable capabilities in various software engineering tasks, spurring the rapid growth of the Large Language Models for Software Engineering (LLM4SE) area. However, limited attention has been paid to developing efficient LLM4SE techniques that demand minimal computational cost, time, and memory resources, as well as green LLM4SE solutions that reduce energy consumption, water usage, and carbon emissions. This paper aims to redirect the focus of the research community towards the efficiency and greenness of LLM4SE, while also sharing potential research directions to achieve this goal. It commences with a brief overview of the significance of LLM4SE and highlights the need for efficient and green LLM4SE solutions. Subsequently, the paper presents a vision for a future where efficient and green LLM4SE revolutionizes the LLM-based software engineering tool landscape, benefiting various stakeholders, including industry, individual practitioners, and society. The paper then delineates a roadmap for future research, outlining specific research paths and potential solutions for the research community to pursue. While not intended to be a definitive guide, the paper aims to inspire further progress, with the ultimate goal of establishing efficient and green LLM4SE as a central element in the future of software engineering.