研究如何让语言模型在对抗环境中做出好决策,发现无界上下文可保证低后悔,而有界上下文则不行。
Next-Token Prediction and Regret Minimization
- 用模型预测对手下一步动作,再据此近似最优回应
- 无界上下文时,总存在接近的低后悔分布,可实现次线性后悔
- 有界上下文下部分分布与所有低后悔分布相距至少常数,难以改进
本文研究在对抗性在线决策环境中使用下一词预测算法的可行性。若在对手行为序列分布 $\mathcal{D}$ 上训练预测模型,其诱导的在线决策算法(通过近似最佳响应模型预测)是否具有低对抗后悔?对于无界上下文(模型可依赖迄今所有对手动作),我们证明:尽管并非每个分布 $\mathcal{D}$ 都是低后悔分布,但每个 $\mathcal{D}$ 在总变差距离下都与某个低后悔分布指数接近,因此可在几乎不影响原始预测精度的前提下实现次线性后悔。相反,在有界上下文(如现代 Transformer 仅依赖过去 $w$ 步动作)下,存在某些对手行为分布 $\mathcal{D}$,其与任意低后悔分布 $\mathcal{D'}$ 的距离为 $Θ(1)$(即使 $w = Ω(T)$ 且此类分布存在)。最后,我们证明无界上下文的鲁棒化可通过标准 Transformer 层实现,并提供实验证据表明变压器模型可高效学习这些新的低后悔分布。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
We consider the question of how to employ next-token prediction algorithms in adversarial online decision-making environments. Specifically, if we train a next-token prediction model on a distribution $\mathcal{D}$ over sequences of opponent actions, when is it the case that the induced online decision-making algorithm (by approximately best responding to the model's predictions) has low adversarial regret (i.e., when is $\mathcal{D}$ a \emph{low-regret distribution})? For unbounded context windows (where the prediction made by the model can depend on all the actions taken by the adversary thus far), we show that although not every distribution $\mathcal{D}$ is a low-regret distribution, every distribution $\mathcal{D}$ is exponentially close (in TV distance) to one low-regret distribution, and hence sublinear regret can always be achieved at negligible cost to the accuracy of the original next-token prediction model. In contrast to this, for bounded context windows (where the prediction made by the model can depend only on the past $w$ actions taken by the adversary, as may be the case in modern transformer architectures), we show that there are some distributions $\mathcal{D}$ of opponent play that are $Θ(1)$-far from any low-regret distribution $\mathcal{D'}$ (even when $w = Ω(T)$ and such distributions exist). Finally, we complement these results by showing that the unbounded context robustification procedure can be implemented by layers of a standard transformer architecture, and provide empirical evidence that transformer models can be efficiently trained to represent these new low-regret distributions.
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