数据对齐比数据量更重要,影响模型在特定任务上的表现。
Quantifying the Importance of Data Alignment in Downstream Model Performance
- 用任务相似度量化训练与评估数据的对齐程度
- 对齐度越高,模型损失越低,效果越好
- 适合关注模型在专业任务中表现的研究者
与传统强调数据规模不同,本文探讨了数据对齐——这一常被忽视的数据质量因素——在训练大语言模型中的作用。我们采用基于Task2Vec的对齐系数,量化训练数据与评估数据之间的相似性,并在两个场景下进行受控干预实验:1. 不同预训练数据与评估数据间的对齐影响;2. 领域微调数据与领域评估数据间的对齐影响。所研究的领域任务为自动形式化,即自然语言与代码间的机器翻译任务,用于形式化验证。结果表明,在两种设置下,训练数据与评估数据的对齐系数与模型在下游任务上的损失/困惑度之间存在强烈且可预测的负相关关系。这提示应重新审视大语言模型的训练策略,凸显数据对齐相较于数据数量的重要性,尤其在如自动形式化等专业任务中。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Contrary to the conventional emphasis on dataset size, we explore the role of data alignment -- an often overlooked aspect of data quality -- in training capable Large Language Models (LLMs). To do so, we use the Task2Vec-based alignment coefficient, a quantitative measure of the similarity between two datasets, to quantify the impact of alignment between training data and evaluation data on downstream performance. In particular, we conduct controlled \textit{interventional} experiments for two settings: 1. the impact of increased alignment coefficients between various pre-training (pt) against evaluation datasets, and 2. the impact of increased alignment coefficients between domain specific fine-tuning (ft) against domain specific evaluation. The domain specific task we explore is Autoformalization -- the machine translation task between natural language and code for formal verification. In both settings, we find a strong, predictable negative correlation between the alignment coefficient of a model's training and evaluation data and the model's loss/perplexity on the respective downstream task. These findings suggest a re-evaluation of LLM training approaches, demonstrating the relevance of data alignment compared to data quantity, especially in specialized downstream tasks such as Autoformalization.
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