Topics in LLM Agents(25'Spring)

Course Console

Lectures: Room 1304 | Siebel Center for Comp Sci , Tuesday/Thursday 03:30 PM - 04:45 PM.

Canvas: for homework/report submission.

Github: most of course information is here, including schedule and paper lists.

Slack: ALL communication regarding this course must be via [Slack](link visible in the Canvas,join with your UIUC email address). This includes questions, discussions, announcements, as well as private messages.

Piazza: This feature is deprecated. Replaced by Slack.

OpenReview: for the simulation of review and response as part of the course projects.

Note: Please use Piazza to submit your questions. Please DON'T email the TA or Professor You, unless the matter is private.

Course Description

Learning Objectives: This course offers an in-depth exploration of the fascinating field of LLM agents. Designed as a seminar-style course, it guides students through the fundamental methods that power LLM agents and examines their practical applications in real-world contexts. At the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Have a great overview of state-of-the-art LLM agent papers;
• Familiar with the process of research lifecycle including paper submission, paper review and rebuttal;
• Critique and evaluate the design details of LLM agent papers.

Structure: The course is structured around reading cutting-edge research papers, student-led presentations, interactive discussions, and collaborative semester-long projects. We begin with an introduction to the core concepts of LLM agents, then delve into the latest research on building agents, covering topics including:

• Agent ability
  • Reasoning
  • Memory
  • Planning
  • Multimodal understanding
• Agent evaluation
• Agent framework
  • Tool use
  • Retrieval-augmented generation
  • Multi-agent systems
• Agent application
  • Auto-research
  • Coding agents
  • Social agents
  • Gaming agents
• Challenges from agents to AGI
  • Data
  • Safety
  • Alignment
  • Human-agent interaction

Tentative Schedule and Reading List

Note: (1) This is an evolving list; (2) For each topic, there would be 2-3 "required" papers that presenter should include in their in-class presentation.

Group ID and Group members: see google form[Link visible on Canvas syllabus].

Tentative Grading

Groups: All activities of this course, except your own participation :), will be performed in groups of 3 students. You can use Piazza to find your team mates online. Form a group of 3 members and declare your group's membership and paper preferences (with your UIUC email address) by Jan 30. After this date, we will form groups from the remaining students.

Policies

Pre-class: Pre-class Idea/Question Proposal

Each lecture will include one or two required readings that all students are expected to read. Additionally, there will be optional related readings that only the presenter(s) are required to familiarize themselves with. These optional readings are not mandatory for the rest of the class.

Before each lecture(starting from Jan 28 for counts), all students must submit here(with your UIUC email address) one insightful question/idea for each of the presented papers. Up to five absences.

In-class: Presentation & Discussion

In each class after Overview of LLM Agents taught by Prof.You, the students are expected to conduct the presentation and discussion.

This discussion will involve two distinct roles played by different student groups, simulating an interactive and dynamic scholarly exchange. Each group will be assigned to the following two roles once:

1. The Pilot Presenter:

   • Group Assignment: Prepare slides for papers marked as "Required" and deliver a presentation on a specific topic.
   • Responsibility: Present the assigned topic and address audience questions during the presentation.

2. The Co-pilot Reviewers:

   • Group Assignment: Write summary for "required" papers(usually 2 papers) in a single topic and take on the role of reviewers for one assigned slot.
   • Responsibility: Critically evaluate the paper by posing challenging questions, identifying weaknesses, and suggesting areas for improvement. Your role is to provide constructive feedback and engage in a simulated peer review discussion.

Rest of the Class: feel free to actively ask questions and engage in the dialogue.

Guidelines for the Pilot Presenter

The course will follow a seminar format, with one group presenting during each class session. Each group will be responsible for presenting at least one lecture throughout the semester. Presentations should be no longer than 50 minutes, excluding interruptions. However, presenters should anticipate and be prepared to address questions and interruptions during their talk.

During your presentation, you are expected to:

• Provide a concise background to introduce and motivate the problem (e.g., referencing prior talks for simplicity).
• Explain the main idea, approach, and/or key insight from the required reading (use examples whenever appropriate).
• Cover technical details to help the audience grasp the key points without needing to closely read the material (provide a quick overview of evaluations).
• Highlight differences between the required reading and related works, including any additional readings.
• Discuss strengths and weaknesses of the required reading and suggest potential directions for future research.

Submission of slides:

• Deadlines: Slides for the presentation must be submitted to the instructor team via Canvas (in *.pptx format) at least 24 hours before the scheduled class.
• Format: We recommend (not mandatory) this template.

Guidelines for the Co-pilot Reviewers

Each group will be assigned roughly 1 summary for "required" paper in a single topic within 2 days after class presentation.

Each summary should address the following questions in 2-3 pages with sufficient detail:

1. What is the problem being addressed, and why is it important?
2. What is the state of related works in this topic?
3. What solution is proposed, and what is the key insight guiding the solution?
4. What are the drawbacks or limitations of the proposed solution?
5. What potential directions could be explored in future research?

Submission of Paper Summary:

• Deadline: Summaries must be uploaded to Canvas (by one member in the group) within 2 days after the presentation of the corresponding paper. Late submissions will not be counted.
• Format: We provide this template for your reference. We suggest that you can use Google Docs to enable in-line comments and suggestions.

Best Practices:

• Allocate enough time to read and understand the assigned papers.
• Discuss the papers as a group to share perspectives and insights.
• Write the summary carefully, ensuring clarity and completeness.
• Incorporate key observations from the class discussion in your final submission.

Project: A Survey on LLM Agents

After team building with 3 members in each group, you are expected to start your term-long project ASAP.

To simulate the whole process of academic research, you are supposed to have a proposal, submit a paper, review and response.

For the proposal:

• Topic: Select a topic (not too ambitious like "LLM agents" or not too small like "Minecraft gaming agents") related to LLM agents. Of course, you can choose the topic that you play as a presenter but it is not mandatory.
• Format: Templates adapted from TMLR, about 2 pages.
• Deadlines: Feb 17, 2025.

We will also have a midterm presentation to check your progress:

• Scheduled Slots: March 11/13, 2025.
• Time limit: To decide.

For survey paper/report submission(draft):

• Description: Not the final version but you should be ready and complete for a submission. Important for review and response afterward.

• Where to submit: OpenReview and Canvas. Details to update later.

• Format: Templates adapted from TMLR.

• Page Limitation: 📄 (Note: There is no upper limit on page length, but evaluations will be based on quality, not quantity.Excluding references): • Groups of 3 students: at least 9 pages • Groups of 2 students: at least 8 pages • Groups of 4 students: at least 10 pages

• Deadlines: April 16, 2025.

For review and response:

• Description: You are expected to review the survey of other groups and response the reviews for your own paper submission. The duration of both review and response would be 1 week for each.
• Where to review and response: OpenReview and Canvas. Details to update later.
• Guidelines: See slides of review&rebuttal tips here
• Deadlines: Review: April 23; Response: April 30.

For final presentation:

• Description: you are expected to present your survey paper.
• Scheduled Slots: May 1/6, 2025.
• Time limit: To decide.

For final version of survey paper:

• Description: you are expected to submit your final version of survey report.
• Format: Templates adapted from TMLR.
• Where to submit: Canvas.
• Page Limitation: To decide.
• Deadlines: May 8, 2025.

Summary of Deadlines

We summarize the deadlines of activities of pre-class, in-class and project here for your convenience.

Acknowledgements

In course structure design, this course is heavily inspired by other seminar-like courses, particularly UIUC CS598-GenAI System. Acknowledgments to Prof.Fan Lai for generous sharing of his great course. For course topics and paper lists, we mainly refer to UC Berkeley CS294/194-196 Large Language Model Agents and EMNLP 2024 Tutorial: Language Agents: Foundations, Prospects, and Risks. Thanks Haofei Yu, Zirui Chen, Kunlun Zhu and other Ulab members for suggestions.