Zhaowei Zhang (张钊为)

Ph.D. Student
School of Intelligence Science and Technology
Peking University
Email: zwzhang [at] stu (dot) pku (dot) edu (dot) cn

[Google Scholar] [Github] [Twitter] [LinkedIn]

Research Interests
  • AI Alignment & Post-Training
  • Omni MLLM & World Models
  • Efficient AI
  • Reinforcement Learning
  • Game Theory & Mech. Design

Zhaowei is pronounced as "Ju" (as in judge) + "ou" (as in out) + "Way"; Zhang, or Cheung in Hong Kong, is "Ju" (as in judge) + "on" | audio ([International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA]) here: [tʂɑuwei][tʂɑŋ].

I am currently a third-year Ph.D. candidate at Institute for AI, School of Intelligence Science and Technology, Peking University. Specifically, I am in the team of PAIR-Lab led by Prof. Yaodong Yang. The long-term goal of my research is to build a strong and efficient AI system, which can understand, interact, and make full use of computing resources. To this end, my research focuses on reducing the complexity of the world. In particular, I am currently quite interested in Omni MLLM & World Models, Efficient ML, and Reinforcement Learning. I welcome more friends to discuss these topics with me ☺️.

Selected Publications (* indicates equal contribution.)

    2025
  • PoliCon: Evaluating LLMs on Achieving Diverse Political Consensus Objectives
    Zhaowei Zhang, Xiaobo Wang, Minghua Yi, Mengmeng Wang, Fengshuo Bai, Zilong Zheng, Yipeng Kang, Yaodong Yang
    ICLR 2026
    [Paper] [Website]
  • Evaluating Generalization Capabilities of LLM-Based Agents in Mixed-Motive Scenarios Using Concordia
    Cooperate with the DeepMind Concordia Team
    NeurIPS DB Track 2025
    [Paper]
  • Amulet: ReAlignment During Test Time for Personalized Preference Adaptation of LLMs
    Zhaowei Zhang, Fengshuo Bai, Qizhi Chen, Chengdong Ma, Mingzhi Wang, Haoran Sun, Zilong Zheng, Yaodong Yang
    ICLR 2025
    [Paper] [Website] [Code]
  • 2024
  • ValueDCG: Measuring Comprehensive Human Value Understanding Ability of Language Models
    Zhaowei Zhang, Fengshuo Bai, Jun Gao, Yaodong Yang
    NeurIPS 2025 Workshop on Regulatable ML
    [Paper] [Blog] [Chinese Blog]
  • Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models
    As a major contributor
    TMLR
    [Paper] [Website]
  • Roadmap on Incentive Compatibility for AI Alignment and Governance in Sociotechnical Systems
    Zhaowei Zhang, Fengshuo Bai, Mingzhi Wang, Haoyang Ye, Chengdong Ma, Yaodong Yang
    AGI 2025 (Oral)
    [Paper] [Chinese Blog]
  • 2023
  • AI Alignment: A Comprehensive Survey
    PAIR-Lab
    ACM Computing Surveys
    [Paper] [Website]
  • ProAgent: Building Proactive Cooperative AI with Large Language Models
    Ceyao Zhang, Kaijie Yang, Siyi Hu, Zihao Wang, Guanghe Li, Yihang Sun, Cheng Zhang, Zhaowei Zhang, Anji Liu, Song-Chun Zhu, Xiaojun Chang, Junge Zhang, Feng Yin, Yitao Liang, Yaodong Yang
    AAAI 2024 (Oral)
    [Paper]
  • Heterogeneous Value Alignment Evaluation for Large Language Models
    Zhaowei Zhang, Nian Liu, Siyuan Qi, Ceyao Zhang, Ziqi Rong, Shuguang Cui, Song-Chun Zhu, Yaodong Yang
    AGI 2025 & AAAI 2024 Workshop: Public Sector LLMs (Oral)
    [Paper]
  • STAS: Spatial-Temporal Return Decomposition for Solving Sparse Rewards Problems in Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning
    Sirui Chen *, Zhaowei Zhang *, Yali Du, Yaodong Yang
    AAAI 2024
    [Paper] [Code]

Blogs & Tutorials

  • AI for Helping People to Find Consensus
    Abstract: This tutorial explains how to use LLMs as scalable "AI mediators" that infer preferences from large amounts of free-text opinions and generate consensus statements representing different groups, helping address information bandwidth limits, anchoring effects, and inefficiencies in real-world deliberation. It covers group-level generative social choice and stakeholder-level consensus generation and evaluation, and discusses challenges such as bias, dynamic negotiation, and interaction costs.
    [Tutorial Slides]
  • The Three-Layer Paradigm for Implementing Sociotechnical AI Alignment: A Top-Down-Top Outlook
    Abstract: This blog clarifies what socio-technical systems (STS) mean in the context of AI alignment, resolving inconsistent definitions across scales. It presents a computable, multi-scale view of STS alignment problems and outlines possible research directions.
    [English Version] [Chinese Version]

Internship

Kling AI, Kuaishou Tech.
Research Intern, working with Xintao Wang
February 2026
Microsoft Research (MSRA)
Research Intern, working with Xing Xie & Xiaoyuan Yi
September 2025 - January 2026

Selected Awards

  • Huawei Spark Award, 2025. (the only student recipient) [News]
  • [Top 5%] Wuhan University Outstanding Thesis Award, 2023.

Services

  • Reviewer for AI conferences represented by ICLR, NeurIPS, and ICML.
  • Program Committee Member for AAAI 2026 AIA Track.
  • Program Committee Member for AAAI 2026.
  • Program Committee Member for DAI 2024.