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Large Language Models Can Self-Improve in Long-context Reasoning
Abstract
Summary
AI-Generated Summary
Paper Overview
The paper introduces SEALONG, a self-improvement approach for Large Language Models (LLMs) in long-context reasoning tasks. SEALONG significantly enhances LLM performance without human annotations and outperforms prior approaches, showcasing the potential for LLM self-improvement in challenging question types.
Core Contribution
- SEALONG introduces a novel self-improvement approach for LLMs in long-context reasoning tasks.
- The method involves multiple output sampling, Minimum Bayes Risk scoring, and supervised fine-tuning or preference optimization.
- Demonstrates substantial absolute improvements in LLM performance, particularly with the Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct model.
Research Context
- Addresses the limitations of existing approaches in covering challenging question types requiring full-context reasoning.
- Proposes a self-improvement strategy for LLMs in long-context reasoning, advancing the capabilities of LLMs in processing extended contexts.
Keywords
- Large Language Models (LLMs)
- Self-improvement
- Long-context reasoning
- Minimum Bayes Risk (MBR)
- Supervised fine-tuning
Background
The paper focuses on enhancing Large Language Models' (LLMs) performance in long-context reasoning tasks. Existing approaches relying on synthetic data for fine-tuning LLMs have limitations, prompting the development of SEALONG to enable self-improvement in LLMs without human annotations.
Research Gap
- Existing approaches struggle with long-context reasoning despite advancements in processing extended contexts.
- Synthetic data-based fine-tuning methods hinder further progress in improving LLM performance.
Technical Challenges
- LLMs face difficulties in handling challenging question types requiring full-context reasoning.
- Experimental setups for implementing SEALONG are limited to LLMs with up to 14B parameters.
Prior Approaches
- Previous methods involved fine-tuning LLMs with synthetic data, restricting advancements in enhancing LLM performance.
- SEALONG surpasses prior approaches by enabling self-improvement in LLMs for long-context reasoning tasks.
Methodology
The methodology of SEALONG involves multiple technical components to facilitate self-improvement in LLMs for long-context reasoning tasks.
Theoretical Foundation
- Utilizes multiple output sampling, Minimum Bayes Risk scoring, and supervised fine-tuning or preference optimization for LLM self-improvement.
- Implements self-supervision strategies to guide LLMs in generating accurate responses and evaluating their performance.
Technical Architecture
- Incorporates Sequence parallelization and QLoRA for efficient fine-tuning in long-context scenarios.
- Specifies key parameters like LoRA rank, alpha, dropout, batch size, learning rate, and maximum sequence length for model fine-tuning.
Implementation Details
- Fine-tunes models for one epoch on a computing setup with 8×H100GPUs.
- Utilizes jina-embeddings-v3 and ORPO for fine-tuning Llama-3.1 and Qwen-2.5 models in SEALONG.
Innovation Points
- SEALONG introduces innovative self-improvement strategies for LLMs in long-context reasoning tasks.
- Implements advanced techniques like MBR decoding and supervised fine-tuning to enhance LLM performance.
Experimental Validation
The experimental validation of SEALONG showcases its effectiveness in improving LLM performance in long-context reasoning tasks.
Setup
- Utilizes MuSiQue's training set with self-supervision for generalization ability.
- Synthesizes training data by combining related and unrelated documents for context in the experiments.
Metrics
- Evaluates performance using SubEM metric, emphasizing top-performing results.
- Compares SEALONG's performance across various long-context tasks like Qasper, MultiFieldQA-En, HotpotQA, MuSiQue, and 2WikiMultihopQA.
Results
- Demonstrates significant enhancements in LLM performance across different models with SEALONG.
- Outperforms previous datasets and shows strong data efficiency with minimal synthetic examples.
Comparative Analysis
- Compares SEALONG with prior approaches, highlighting its superior performance in long-context reasoning tasks.
- Shows improvements in long-context performance without compromising short-context task performance.
Impact and Implications
SEALONG's contributions have significant implications for the advancement of LLMs in long-context reasoning tasks.
Key Findings
- SEALONG achieves notable absolute improvements in LLM performance, particularly with the Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct model.
- Demonstrates the potential for LLM self-improvement without human annotations, paving the way for enhanced long-context reasoning capabilities.
Limitations
- The experimental setup for SEALONG is currently limited to LLMs with up to 14B parameters.
- Further investigation is needed to assess SEALONG's effectiveness at larger scales and explore longer context lengths.
Future Directions
- Future research should focus on creating high-quality prompt sets for long-context LLMs to enhance performance.
- Exploration of longer context lengths and scalability of SEALONG at larger parameter scales is essential for comprehensive evaluation.
Practical Significance
- SEALONG's self-improvement strategies offer practical applications in enhancing LLM performance for challenging question types requiring full-context reasoning.
- The methodology and findings of SEALONG can be leveraged to advance the capabilities of LLMs in processing extended contexts effectively.