通过几何优化提升大模型生成多样性,避免重复输出。
Exploring Diverse Generation Paths via Inference-time Stiefel Activation Steering
- 在推理阶段用流形优化控制激活向量方向,推动多路径生成
- 实测在科学发现任务中多样性显著提升,质量不下降
- 轻量级单步更新设计,适合实时生成场景
语言模型常局限于高概率输出,导致生成路径同质化且易陷入模式崩溃。基于采样的方法虽引入随机性,但仍难以保证多并发生成间的多样性。本文提出STARS(Stiefel-based Activation Steering for Diverse Reasoning),一种无需训练、仅在推理时干预的方法,将激活控制转化为探索引擎。在每个词元处,STARS收集多个并发生成的隐藏激活,并在Stiefel流形上联合优化多个加性引导方向。该方法最大化引导激活的几何体积,同时利用流形结构强制引导干预的正交性,从而显式促进并发生成的激活向量差异,隐式推动生成轨迹分化。该流形优化可通过黎曼梯度下降求解并保证收敛,但计算耗时。为此,我们设计了轻量级单步更新与激进闭式步长,确保低延迟。在测试用例生成与科学发现基准上,STARS持续优于标准采样方法,在不损失质量的前提下显著提升多样性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Language models often default to a narrow set of high-probability outputs, leaving their generation paths homogeneous and prone to mode collapse. Sampling-based strategies inject randomness but still struggle to guarantee diversity across multiple concurrent generation runs. We address this limitation by introducing STARS ($\textbf{St}$iefel-based $\textbf{A}$ctivation Steering for Diverse $\textbf{R}$ea$\textbf{S}$oning), a training-free, inference-time intervention method that transforms activation steering into an exploration engine. At each token, STARS collects the hidden activations of concurrent generation runs and optimizes multiple additive steering directions jointly on the Stiefel manifold. STARS maximizes the geometric volume of the steered activations, while the Stiefel manifold induces orthogonality of the steering interventions. This formulation explicitly promotes divergent activation vectors of concurrent generation runs, and implicitly promotes divergent generation trajectories. This manifold optimization formulation can be solved using a Riemannian gradient descent algorithm with convergence guarantees, but this algorithm is too time-consuming for real-time inference. To guarantee low latency, we further design a lightweight one-step update with an aggressive, closed-form stepsize. For test case generation and scientific discovery benchmarks, STARS consistently outperforms standard sampling methods, achieving greater diversity without sacrificing qualitative performance.
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