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This program is tentative and subject to change.

Wed 30 Apr 2025 17:15 - 17:30 at Canada Hall 1 and 2 - AI for SE 2 Chair(s): Tingting Yu

Neural Language Models of Code, or Neural Code Models (NCMs), are rapidly progressing from research prototypes to commercial developer tools. As such, understanding the capabilities and limitations of such models is becoming critical. However, the abilities of these models are typically measured using automated metrics that often only reveal a portion of their real-world performance. While, in general, the performance of NCMs appears promising, currently much is unknown about how such models arrive at decisions. To this end, this paper introduces do-code , a post hoc interpretability method specific to NCMs that is capable of explaining model predictions. do-code is based upon causal inference to enable programming language-oriented explanations. While the theoretical underpinnings of docodecode are extensible to exploring different model properties, we provide a concrete instantiation that aims to mitigate the impact of spurious correlations by grounding explanations of model behavior in properties of programming languages. To demonstrate the practical benefit of docodecode , we illustrate the insights that our framework can provide by performing a case study on two popular deep learning architectures and ten NCMs. The results of this case study illustrate that our studied NCMs are sensitive to changes in code syntax. All our NCMs, except for the BERT-like model, statistically learn to predict tokens related to blocks of code ( e.g., brackets, parenthesis, semicolon) with less confounding bias as compared to other programming language constructs. These insights demonstrate the potential of docodecode as a useful method to detect and facilitate the elimination of confounding bias in NCMs.

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Wed 30 Apr

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

16:00 - 17:30
AI for SE 2Research Track / Journal-first Papers at Canada Hall 1 and 2
Chair(s): Tingting Yu University of Connecticut
16:00
15m
Talk
Large Language Models for Safe MinimizationArtifact-FunctionalArtifact-AvailableArtifact-Reusable
Research Track
Aashish Yadavally University of Texas at Dallas, xiaokai rong The University of Texas at Dallas, Phat Nguyen The University of Texas at Dallas, Tien N. Nguyen University of Texas at Dallas
16:15
15m
Talk
LUNA: A Model-Based Universal Analysis Framework for Large Language Models
Journal-first Papers
Da Song University of Alberta, Xuan Xie University of Alberta, Jiayang Song University of Alberta, Derui Zhu Technical University of Munich, Yuheng Huang University of Alberta, Canada, Felix Juefei-Xu New York University, Lei Ma The University of Tokyo & University of Alberta, Yuheng Huang University of Alberta, Canada
16:30
15m
Talk
Intention is All You Need: Refining Your Code from Your Intention
Research Track
Qi Guo Tianjin University, Xiaofei Xie Singapore Management University, Shangqing Liu Nanyang Technological University, Ming Hu Nanyang Technological University, Xiaohong Li Tianjin University, Lei Bu Nanjing University
16:45
15m
Talk
RLCoder: Reinforcement Learning for Repository-Level Code Completion
Research Track
Yanlin Wang Sun Yat-sen University, yanli wang Sun Yat-sen University, Daya Guo , Jiachi Chen Sun Yat-sen University, Ruikai Zhang Huawei Cloud Computing Technologies, Yuchi Ma Huawei Cloud Computing Technologies, Zibin Zheng Sun Yat-sen University
17:00
15m
Talk
InterTrans: Leveraging Transitive Intermediate Translations to Enhance LLM-based Code Translation
Research Track
Marcos Macedo Queen's University, Yuan Tian Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Pengyu Nie University of Waterloo, Filipe Cogo Centre for Software Excellence, Huawei Canada, Bram Adams Queen's University
17:15
15m
Talk
Toward a Theory of Causation for Interpreting Neural Code Models
Journal-first Papers
David Nader Palacio William & Mary, Alejandro Velasco William & Mary, Nathan Cooper William & Mary, Alvaro Rodriguez Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Kevin Moran University of Central Florida, Denys Poshyvanyk William & Mary
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