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Optimizing the Balance Between Speciality and Versatility in Large Language Models Through Coarse-to-Fine Tuning


แนวคิดหลัก
A coarse-to-fine framework, CoFiTune, is proposed to strike a balance between the speciality and versatility of large language models by selectively fine-tuning specific modules within a defined layer range.
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The content discusses the challenge of balancing speciality and versatility in large language models (LLMs). Aligned LLMs exhibit remarkable versatility, but they often fall short in certain tasks or domains, requiring fine-tuning to gain speciality. However, fine-tuning can lead to catastrophic forgetting (CF), causing a significant loss of versatility.

To address this challenge, the authors propose a Coarse-to-Fine framework, CoFiTune, which consists of two key components:

  1. Coarse-grained Level:

    • An empirical tree-search algorithm is used to identify and update specific modules (e.g., feed-forward network, FFN) within a defined layer range that are crucial for gaining speciality without significantly affecting versatility.
    • The remaining parameters are kept frozen to further preserve versatility.
  2. Fine-grained Level:

    • A fine-grained soft-masking mechanism is employed to regulate the backward gradient flow based on the importance of units (attention heads or neurons) for versatility, further mitigating the CF issue without harming speciality.

The authors conduct extensive experiments across diverse tasks and model scales, including a newly introduced Chinese CF setting. The results demonstrate that CoFiTune consistently outperforms baseline methods, achieving over 95% versatility and 90% speciality compared to the original and full supervised fine-tuning (SFT) models on average.

The authors also provide several key insights:

  1. The "(N × 25%, N × 50%] - FFN" configuration yields the best overall performance across all tasks and model scales.
  2. The fine-grained soft-masking mechanism effectively mitigates the CF in versatility without harming speciality.
  3. The FFN module, especially the down-projection, is more crucial than the multi-head attention (MHA) module for gaining speciality.
  4. The versatility of LLMs may predominantly reside in the lower layer range (0, N × 25%], particularly within the FFN module.

These insights contribute to a better understanding of the information forwarding process in LLMs and provide valuable guidance for future research in this field.

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สถิติ
"The presence of redundant parameters in Transformer-based models is crucial to identify the key components and accurately comprehend their internal mechanisms." "Recent endeavors try to analyze the layers and modules in Transformer, revealing an information-copying behavior within the attention module and considering the up and down projection matrices in the FFN as the key and value of the memories."
คำพูด
"Aligned LLMs showcase remarkable versatility, capable of handling diverse real-world tasks. Meanwhile, aligned LLMs are also expected to exhibit speciality, excelling in specific applications." "Fine-tuning with extra data, a common practice to gain speciality, often leads to catastrophic forgetting (CF) of previously acquired versatility, hindering the model's performance across diverse tasks." "CoFiTune consistently outperforms all baseline methods across diverse tasks and model scales. When compared to the full-parameter SFT, CoFiTune offers an average versatility improvement of 14%, while only incurring a marginal loss in speciality."

ข้อมูลเชิงลึกที่สำคัญจาก

by Hengyuan Zha... ที่ arxiv.org 04-17-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.10306.pdf
Balancing Speciality and Versatility: a Coarse to Fine Framework for  Supervised Fine-tuning Large Language Model

สอบถามเพิ่มเติม

How can the insights from this work be applied to other types of neural networks beyond Transformer-based models to achieve a balance between speciality and versatility?

The insights gained from the CoFiTune framework can be applied to other types of neural networks beyond Transformer-based models by focusing on identifying key components within the network that contribute to both speciality and versatility. For instance, in convolutional neural networks (CNNs), one could explore specific convolutional layers or filters that are crucial for speciality in certain tasks while maintaining versatility across a range of tasks. By using a similar coarse to fine framework as CoFiTune, researchers can pinpoint and update these critical components while keeping other parameters frozen to strike a balance between speciality and versatility. Additionally, the concept of fine-grained soft-masking to regulate the backward gradient flow based on the importance of units for versatility can be adapted to other neural network architectures. For example, in recurrent neural networks (RNNs), gating mechanisms can be employed to control the flow of information through the network based on the importance of specific units for maintaining versatility. This approach can help prevent catastrophic forgetting of previously learned information while fine-tuning the network for specific tasks. Overall, the principles of identifying key components, using a coarse to fine framework, and implementing fine-grained mechanisms to regulate information flow can be generalized to various neural network architectures to achieve a balance between speciality and versatility.

What are the potential limitations or drawbacks of the proposed CoFiTune framework, and how can they be addressed in future research?

While the CoFiTune framework shows promising results in balancing speciality and versatility in large language models (LLMs), there are potential limitations and drawbacks that should be considered: Scalability: The tree-search exploration algorithm used in CoFiTune may become computationally expensive and time-consuming as the model scale increases. Future research could focus on developing more efficient search algorithms or strategies to handle larger models without sacrificing performance. Generalization: The insights and findings from CoFiTune are primarily based on LLMs, and their applicability to other types of neural networks may vary. Future research should explore the generalizability of the framework across different architectures to ensure its effectiveness in diverse settings. Complexity: The Fine-SoftMask mechanism introduced in CoFiTune adds an additional layer of complexity to the fine-tuning process. Future studies could investigate ways to simplify or optimize this mechanism to make it more practical and easier to implement. To address these limitations, future research could focus on optimizing the CoFiTune framework for scalability, generalizing its applicability to various neural network architectures, and streamlining the implementation of the Fine-SoftMask mechanism for improved usability.

Could the information forwarding process in LLMs be further validated or refined through additional experiments or theoretical analysis?

The information forwarding process in LLMs, as speculated in the study, could be further validated and refined through additional experiments or theoretical analysis. Here are some potential avenues for further investigation: Experimental Validation: Conducting experiments to directly observe and analyze the flow of information through different modules in LLMs. By tracking the activation patterns and information propagation at each layer, researchers can gain insights into how information is processed and forwarded within the network. Ablation Studies: Performing ablation studies to systematically analyze the impact of different modules (e.g., MHA, FFN) on the information forwarding process. By selectively disabling or modifying specific components, researchers can assess their contributions to the overall functionality of the model. Theoretical Analysis: Developing theoretical models or frameworks to formalize the information forwarding process in LLMs. By establishing mathematical representations of how information flows through the network, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms at play. By combining experimental validation, ablation studies, and theoretical analysis, researchers can further validate and refine the information forwarding process in LLMs, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of how these models operate.
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