测试了大模型在真实场景下的合并效果,发现简单方法反而最有效。
A Systematic Study of In-the-Wild Model Merging for Large Language Models
- 用六种主流方法合并12个微调模型,评估16个基准任务
- 只有任务算术法在多数情况下超越基础模型,其他方法效果不佳
- 提醒需设计适配大模型的专用合并算法,适合关注模型复用的研究者
模型合并可在不额外训练的情况下将多个微调版本整合为单一模型,具有高效复用与性能提升潜力。然而,在专家模型角色模糊、训练目标重叠甚至冲突的‘真实场景’下,现有合并方法是否仍有效尚不明确。为此,我们对异构专家的大规模、系统性评估展开研究:覆盖四款开源大语言模型、每模型12个微调检查点、16个标准基准,测试六种先进合并方法(包括近期子空间方法)。通过标准化评测,既衡量合并模型优于基线的概率,也计算相较最优单个检查点的相对增益。结果表明,最古老简单的任务算术法是唯一能稳定提升性能的方法;其他干扰感知与子空间合并方法通常无法带来显著改进。这说明当前技术难以从异构且可能冲突的模型中提取有效权重更新。该发现推动了面向大模型的专用合并算法与合并感知微调方法的设计需求。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Model merging combines multiple fine-tuned checkpoints into a single model without additional training, offering an attractive approach to reusing models and efficiently improving performance. However, it remains unclear whether the advantages reported for settings where all merged experts have distinct roles and are tuned on clearly separated tasks also hold in settings where the merged experts do not have clearly distinct roles, but are trained on overlapping or even conflicting objectives. To evaluate this setting, we present a large-scale, systematic evaluation of "in-the-wild" model merging of heterogeneous experts, that may have been trained on overlapping or conflicting objectives. Concretely, we evaluate six state-of-the-art merging methods, including recent subspace methods, across four open-weight LLMs, twelve fine-tuned checkpoints per base model, and sixteen standard LLM benchmarks. Evaluating through standardized benchmarks, we measure both the probability that a model merged from a heterogeneous set of experts outperforms the base model and we measure relative gains over the best individual checkpoint. Our results show that the oldest and simplest method, Task Arithmetic, is the only approach that reliably yields performance gains on LLMs in this "in-the-wild" setting. Other interference-aware and subspace merging methods typically do not result in notable improvements over the base model. Our findings indicate that current merging techniques mostly do not enable extracting useful weight updates from heterogeneous and potentially conflicting versions. This motivates the design of LLM-specific merging algorithms and merging-aware fine-tuning methods.
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