Publications

Multi-Layer Kernel Machines: Fast and Optimal Nonparametric Regression with Uncertainty Quantification

Under R&R at Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), January 2024

Wenlu Xu†, Tong Zhu†, Huiying Zhong, and Xiaowu Dai. [Code]

Common-Agency Games for Multi-Objective Test-Time Alignment

Preprint, January 2026

Baiting Chen†, Tong Zhu†, Rui Yu†, and Xiaowu Dai. A game-theoretic framework for multi-objective test-time alignment of language models using common-agency games. [Code]

[Link]

Mechanism Design Meets Large Language Models: Foundations and Frontiers

Preprint, January 2026

Baiting Chen, Tong Zhu, Xuanang Li, Yichi Zhang, and Xiaowu Dai. A survey of the intersection of mechanism design theory and large language models. [Code]

[Link]

Incentivizing Truthful Language Models via Peer Elicitation Games

NeurIPS 2025, September 2025

Tong Zhu†, Baiting Chen†, Jiale Han, Lexin Li, Gang Li, and Xiaowu Dai. Introduces PEG, a training-free framework that uses game-theoretic incentives to elicit truthful LLM behavior without ground-truth labels or fine-tuning.

[Link]

Competitive Multi-Agent Delegation For LLM Reasoning

Working paper

This paper introduces COMMAND, a competitive multi-agent delegation framework that treats LLM reasoning as a principal-agent delegation process, using competition and alignment incentives to elicit higher-quality answers.

[Link]

LightAgent: Production-level Open-source Agentic AI Framework

arXiv preprint, September 2025

Weige Cai, Tong Zhu, Jinyi Niu, Ruiqi Hu, Lingyao Li, Tenglong Wang, Xin Guo, Zhaowei Liu, Dongpo Cheng, Xiaowu Dai, Weining Shen, and Liwen Zhang. A lightweight, open-source agentic AI framework integrating memory, tool use, and Tree of Thought.

[Link]