arXiv:2411.09642cs.LGcs.AI2024-11中稿 · presentation at th…被引 1

语言模型难以同时避免幻觉和模式崩溃,除非有负面样本反馈。

On the Limits of Language Generation: Trade-Offs Between Hallucination and Mode Collapse

  • 从未知语言中学习时,模型需生成未见合法句子并覆盖全部语言特征。
  • 多数语言集合下,仅靠正样本训练无法同时保证生成一致性和多样性。
  • 加入负样本可实现理想生成,暗示后训练反馈对减少幻觉很重要。

指定语言模型的所有期望属性颇具挑战,但某些要求至关重要:在未知语言的随机样本上训练后,模型应能生成训练中未出现的合法字符串,并充分表达该语言的全部丰富性。否则,生成无效串称为‘幻觉’,未能覆盖全部范围则导致‘模式崩溃’。本文研究在统计语言生成框架下,能否同时满足一致性与多样性。基于Gold和Angluin的工作,模型接收来自未知语言K的随机样本,其属于可能无限的语言集合。目标是生成K中未见的字符串。若随着训练规模增加,模型输出趋近于所有未见字符串,则称其生成具有一致性和广度。Kleinberg和Mullainathan [KM24]曾提出一致生成可行,但本文证明:对于一大类语言模型(包括下一个词预测模型),在大多数候选语言集合中,一致性与广度不可兼得。这与[KM24]结果形成对比——后者表明,对任意可数语言集合,仅需一致性即可实现。本研究揭示,带广度的生成与无广度生成本质不同。作为副产品,我们建立了生成具或不具广度所需样本量的近似紧界。最终发现:当正负样本(即属于或不属于K的字符串)均可用时,对任意可数语言集合,一致且广度的生成是可达的。这表明,包含负样本的后训练反馈机制对抑制幻觉、缓解模式崩溃至关重要。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Specifying all desirable properties of a language model is challenging, but certain requirements seem essential. Given samples from an unknown language, the trained model should produce valid strings not seen in training and be expressive enough to capture the language's full richness. Otherwise, outputting invalid strings constitutes "hallucination," and failing to capture the full range leads to "mode collapse." We ask if a language model can meet both requirements. We investigate this within a statistical language generation setting building on Gold and Angluin. Here, the model receives random samples from a distribution over an unknown language K, which belongs to a possibly infinite collection of languages. The goal is to generate unseen strings from K. We say the model generates from K with consistency and breadth if, as training size increases, its output converges to all unseen strings in K. Kleinberg and Mullainathan [KM24] asked if consistency and breadth in language generation are possible. We answer this negatively: for a large class of language models, including next-token prediction models, this is impossible for most collections of candidate languages. This contrasts with [KM24]'s result, showing consistent generation without breadth is possible for any countable collection of languages. Our finding highlights that generation with breadth fundamentally differs from generation without breadth. As a byproduct, we establish near-tight bounds on the number of samples needed for generation with or without breadth. Finally, our results offer hope: consistent generation with breadth is achievable for any countable collection of languages when negative examples (strings outside K) are available alongside positive ones. This suggests that post-training feedback, which encodes negative examples, can be crucial in reducing hallucinations while limiting mode collapse.

语言模型幻觉模式崩溃生成质量

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