揭示自回归模型条件生成中的隐性偏差,说明精确约束生成极难实现。
Hidden Biases in Conditioning Autoregressive Models
- 提出精确条件生成的数学形式化,证明其在全局约束下计算困难。
- 证明句子级MAP解码在多项式时间可计算模型中为NP难问题。
- 指出现有方法存在偏差,适合关注生成质量与理论边界的学者。
大型语言和音乐模型常用于受约束生成,如押韵、固定节奏、补全或位置结尾等。这些系统表现优异,但通常并非对底层自回归模型进行精确条件化,导致隐性推理偏差:样本偏离真实约束分布,无法保证可行解空间的完整覆盖或正确条件概率。本文形式化了几类精确推理任务,并证明相应难度:对于可多项式时间计算下一个词概率的简洁模型,句子级最大后验(MAP)解码为NP难;该难度在单字符和节奏约束下依然存在。采样方面,即使对规则约束(如固定长度终止事件),精确条件归一化也是#P难。与有限状态马尔可夫模型不同,一般自回归模型不支持有界状态动态规划。这些结果正式化了神经解码领域的普遍观点:局部自回归采样容易,而全局形式约束下的精确解码与条件化在一般情况下计算不可行。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language and music models are increasingly used for constrained generation: rhyming lines, fixed meter, inpainting or infilling, positional endings, and other global form requirements. These systems often perform strikingly well, but the induced procedures are usually not exact conditioning of the underlying autoregressive model. This creates a hidden inferential bias, distinct from the better-known notion of bias inherited from the training set: samples are distorted relative to the true constrained distribution, with no generic guarantee of complete coverage of the admissible solution space or of correct conditional probabilities over valid completions. We formalize several exact inference tasks for autoregressive models and prove corresponding hardness results. For succinctly represented autoregressive models whose next-token probabilities are computable in polynomial time, exact sentence-level maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoding is NP-hard. This hardness persists under unary and metrical constraints. On the sampling side, exact conditioned normalization is \#P-hard even for regular constraints such as fixed-length terminal events. Unlike finite-state Markov models, general autoregressive models do not admit a bounded-state dynamic program for these tasks. These results formalize a standard claim in the neural decoding literature: local autoregressive sampling is easy, whereas exact decoding and exact conditioning under global form constraints are computationally intractable in general.
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