多模态大模型信息丢失源于解码器与输入不匹配,关键在训练目标而非架构。
Modality Collapse as Mismatched Decoding: Information-Theoretic Limits of Multimodal LLMs
- 将多模态推理视为不匹配解码问题,解码器仅能提取文本对齐方向的信息。
- 非文本方向信息损失可达98%,可用信息受广义互信息限制,且随分布偏差上升而下降。
- 实验证明训练目标决定可获取信息,调整目标可显著提升情绪识别准确率。
大量研究表明,多模态大模型虽能处理语音和图像,但在非直观任务中表现异常,如物体计数不可靠。本文从信息论角度出发,将多模态大模型推理建模为不匹配解码问题:主要基于文本训练的解码器只能沿文本对齐方向提取信息(在非文本方向上移除高达98%的方差可降低解码损失),且可访问信息量受广义互信息(GMI)约束。我们证明,当源数据与文本数据分布偏差增大或解码器敏感度提高时,信息损失存在理论上限,该上限取决于模型的评分规则而非架构。五种跨语音与视觉模型的验证支持该预测。一项控制实验(两个仅在编码器文本对齐性上不同的Prismatic VLM)表明瓶颈在于解码器的评分规则,而非编码器对齐或学习投影。通过LoRA干预,仅用情感相关目标训练,即可使情感识别准确率从17.3%提升至61.8%,且不影响其他属性,证实训练目标决定了哪些信息可被访问。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Numerous studies have shown that multimodal LLMs process speech and images well but fail in non-intuitive ways rendering trivial tasks such as object counting unreliable. We investigate this behavior from an information-theoretic perspective by framing multimodal LLM inference as a mismatched decoder problem: a decoder trained primarily on text can only extract information along text-aligned directions (removing up to 98% of the variation in modality-specific (non-text) directions improves decoder loss) and the amount of accessible information is bounded by the Generalized Mutual Information (GMI). We show that information loss is bounded as the distributional mismatch between the source data and the text data increases, and as the sensitivity of the decoder increases. This bound is a function of the model's scoring rule not its architecture. We validate the predictions across five models spanning speech and vision. A controlled study (two Prismatic VLMs differing only in encoder text-alignment) shows that the bottleneck lies in the scoring rule of the decoder rather than the text-alignment of the encoder or the learned projection. A LoRA intervention demonstrates that simply training with an emotion-related objective improves emotion detection from 17.3% to 61.8% task accuracy without affecting other attributes, confirming that the training objective determines what becomes accessible.
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