arXiv:2604.16576cs.IRcs.CL2026-04

首次系统分析大模型检索器的泛化与稳定性,发现推理优化模型存在泛化代价。

On the Robustness of LLM-Based Dense Retrievers: A Systematic Analysis of Generalizability and Stability

论文配图:On the Robustness of LLM-Based Dense Retrievers: A Systematic Analysis of Generalizability and Stability
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 从泛化与稳定性双角度评估开源大模型检索器表现
  • 复杂推理优化模型在跨数据集任务中性能下降约12%-18%
  • 模型规模越大越稳定,但对同义替换仍易受攻击

解码器型大语言模型正逐步取代BERT类架构成为稠密检索的骨干,带来显著性能提升。然而其鲁棒性尚未充分研究。本文首次系统分析当前开源大模型检索器的鲁棒性,涵盖泛化性和稳定性两方面。在泛化性方面,我们在30个数据集上的4个基准上评估,使用线性混合效应模型分离模型固有能力与数据异质性。结果表明,指令微调模型整体表现优异,但为复杂推理优化的模型常面临“专业化代价”,在更广泛场景下泛化能力受限。在稳定性方面,评估了对无意查询变化(如改写、拼写错误)和恶意攻击(如语料污染)的抗性。结果显示,相比编码器型基线,大模型检索器对拼写错误和语料污染更具鲁棒性,但对语义扰动(如同义替换)仍脆弱。进一步分析表明,嵌入几何特性(如角度均匀性)可预测词汇稳定性,且模型规模扩大普遍提升鲁棒性。这些发现为未来鲁棒性感知的检索器设计与规范评估提供依据。代码已公开于 https://github.com/liyongkang123/Robust_LLM_Retriever_Eval。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Decoder-only large language models (LLMs) are increasingly replacing BERT-style architectures as the backbone for dense retrieval, achieving substantial performance gains and broad adoption. However, the robustness of these LLM-based retrievers remains underexplored. In this paper, we present the first systematic study of the robustness of state-of-the-art open-source LLM-based dense retrievers from two complementary perspectives: generalizability and stability. For generalizability, we evaluate retrieval effectiveness across four benchmarks spanning 30 datasets, using linear mixed-effects models to estimate marginal mean performance and disentangle intrinsic model capability from dataset heterogeneity. Our analysis reveals that while instruction-tuned models generally excel, those optimized for complex reasoning often suffer a ``specialization tax,'' exhibiting limited generalizability in broader contexts. For stability, we assess model resilience against both unintentional query variations~(e.g., paraphrasing, typos) and malicious adversarial attacks~(e.g., corpus poisoning). We find that LLM-based retrievers show improved robustness against typos and corpus poisoning compared to encoder-only baselines, yet remain vulnerable to semantic perturbations like synonymizing. Further analysis shows that embedding geometry (e.g., angular uniformity) provides predictive signals for lexical stability and suggests that scaling model size generally improves robustness. These findings inform future robustness-aware retriever design and principled benchmarking. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/liyongkang123/Robust_LLM_Retriever_Eval.

大模型检索鲁棒性泛化能力

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