arXiv:2509.13240cs.LG2025-09被引 4

让激活函数可学习,用极少量参数实现高效微调。

Don't Forget the Nonlinearity: Unlocking Activation Functions in Efficient Fine-Tuning

  • 用可学习的有理函数替换固定激活函数,结构化低秩更新系数。
  • 仅更新0.4%参数(0.02M),在CIFAR上准确率提升0.17%~0.27%。
  • 适合资源受限场景,对大模型生成质量也有明显改善。

现有参数高效微调(PEFT)方法主要调整权重矩阵,而保持激活函数固定。本文提出首个直接优化非线性激活函数的PEFT框架NoRA,将固定激活替换为可学习的有理函数,并对分子分母系数施加结构化低秩更新,采用分组设计以局部化适应并提升稳定性,成本极低。在CIFAR-10和CIFAR-100上训练的视觉变换器中,NoRA仅更新0.4%参数(0.02M),性能达到或超过全量微调,准确率分别提升+0.17%和+0.27%。与LoRA结合形成NoRA++后,在相同训练预算下优于LoRA和DoRA,且新增参数更少。在LLaMA3-8B指令微调中,NoRA++持续提升生成质量,平均MMLU得分提升+0.3%~0.8%,其中STEM(Alpaca)提升+1.6%,OpenOrca提升+1.3%。进一步分析表明,NoRA将适应限制在低维函数子空间,隐式正则化更新幅度与方向。结果证明激活空间微调是权重微调的互补且高度高效的替代方案,使激活函数成为模型适配的一等对象。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Existing parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods primarily adapt weight matrices while keeping activation functions fixed. We introduce \textbf{NoRA}, the first PEFT framework that directly adapts nonlinear activation functions in pretrained transformer-based models. NoRA replaces fixed activations with learnable rational functions and applies structured low-rank updates to numerator and denominator coefficients, with a group-wise design that localizes adaptation and improves stability at minimal cost. On vision transformers trained on CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100, NoRA matches or exceeds full fine-tuning while updating only 0.4\% of parameters (0.02M), achieving accuracy gains of +0.17\% and +0.27\%. When combined with LoRA (\textbf{NoRA++}), it outperforms LoRA and DoRA under matched training budgets by adding fewer trainable parameters. On LLaMA3-8B instruction tuning, NoRA++ consistently improves generation quality, yielding average MMLU gains of +0.3\%--0.8\%, including +1.6\% on STEM (Alpaca) and +1.3\% on OpenOrca. We further show that NoRA constrains adaptation to a low-dimensional functional subspace, implicitly regularizing update magnitude and direction. These results establish activation-space tuning as a complementary and highly parameter-efficient alternative to weight-based PEFT, positioning activation functions as first-class objects for model adaptation.

参数高效激活函数微调低秩

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