让提示词像神经网络一样训练,自动优化生成更优指令。
PromptFlow: Training Prompts Like Neural Networks
- 用可微分的模块化框架,通过梯度学习优化提示词
- 在多个数据集上实现比人工设计更好的任务适配效果
- 支持经验复用,适合快速部署于新任务的NLP应用
大型语言模型(LLMs)在自然语言处理任务中表现出深远影响。然而,在不同领域有效部署时,通用模型常因面对专业数据分布而表现不佳。提示工程(PE)通过优化输入指令,使模型输出对齐任务目标,成为无需大规模重训练的高效微调替代方案。尽管前景广阔,人工设计提示仍耗时且依赖专家经验,需反复迭代才能达到最优。现有自动化方法多采用静态更新规则,缺乏动态策略选择能力,且通常整体更新整个提示,未考虑细粒度编辑。此外,如何在提示工程中复用大模型经验仍研究不足。为此,我们提出 PromptFlow,一个受 TensorFlow 启发的模块化训练框架,整合元提示、操作符、优化器与评估器。该框架可接入最新优化方法,通过基于梯度的元学习自主探索最优提示优化路径,仅需少量任务特定数据。我们还设计一种强化学习方法,实现大模型在提示工程中的经验复用。我们在多个数据集上进行了广泛实验,验证了 PromptFlow 的有效性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated profound impact on Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. However, their effective deployment across diverse domains often require domain-specific adaptation strategies, as generic models may underperform when faced with specialized data distributions. Recent advances in prompt engineering (PE) offer a promising alternative to extensive retraining by refining input instructions to align LLM outputs with task objectives. This paradigm has emerged as a rapid and versatile approach for model fine-tuning. Despite its potential, manual prompt design remains labor-intensive and heavily depends on specialized expertise, often requiring iterative human effort to achieve optimal formulations. To address this limitation, automated prompt engineering methodologies have been developed to systematically generate task-specific prompts. However, current implementations predominantly employ static update rules and lack mechanisms for dynamic strategy selection, resulting in suboptimal adaptation to varying NLP task requirements. Furthermore, most methods treat and update the whole prompts at each step, without considering editing prompt sections at a finer granularity. At last, in particular, the problem of how to recycle experience in LLM is still underexplored. To this end, we propose the PromptFlow, a modular training framework inspired by TensorFlow, which integrates meta-prompts, operators, optimization, and evaluator. Our framework can be equipped with the latest optimization methods and autonomously explores optimal prompt refinement trajectories through gradient-based meta-learning, requiring minimal task-specific training data. Specifically, we devise a reinforcement learning method to recycle experience for LLM in the PE process. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on various datasets, and demonstrate the effectiveness of PromptFlow.
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