发现用户提示分布变化会导致大模型性能下降73%,需实时监控。
Measuring Distribution Shift in User Prompts and Its Effects on LLM Performance

- 构建LENS框架,量化真实场景中提示分布变化
- 实测显示提示变化导致平均性能下降73%
- 适合关注模型部署稳定性的工程师和研究者
大语言模型日益应用于动态真实场景,随着新任务、新用户和新提示的引入,用户提示分布会随时间显著变化。这种自然的提示分布偏移严重影响模型可靠性,尤其对面向特定领域或人群的专用模型。尽管已有研究关注分布外鲁棒性,但对真实提示分布偏移的测量及其对已部署模型的影响仍缺乏系统探索。本文提出基于数据的LENS评估框架,用于量化自然提示分布偏移并评估其对部署模型性能的影响。我们在192个真实世界的后部署提示偏移场景(时间、用户群体、地理维度)上进行大规模评估,共训练81个模型,使用468万条训练提示,测试5.76万条提示。结果发现,即使提示行为出现中等程度偏移,部署模型的性能平均下降达73%。该性能下降在不同潜在用户群体和地理区域交互时尤为明显,且与提示分布随时间的变化密切相关。我们系统刻画了模型指令遵循能力随时间及用户群体的变化规律。研究强调必须建立数据驱动的监控机制,以保障模型在多样且不断演化的用户群体中保持性能稳定。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
LLMs are increasingly deployed in dynamic, real-world settings, where the distribution of user prompts can shift substantially over time as new tasks, prompts, and users are introduced to a deployed model. Such natural prompt distribution shift poses a major challenge to LLM reliability, particularly for specialized models designed for narrow domains or user populations. Despite attention to out-of-distribution robustness, there is very limited exploration of measuring natural prompt distribution shift in prior work, and its impact on deployed LLMs remains poorly understood. We introduce the LLM Evaluation under Natural prompt Shift (LENS) framework: a data-centric approach for quantifying natural prompt distribution shift and evaluating its effect on the performance of deployed LLMs. We perform a large-scale evaluation using 192 real-world post-deployment prompt shift settings over time, user group, and geographic axes, training a total of 81 models on 4.68M training prompts, and evaluating on 57.6k prompts. We find that even moderate shifts in user prompt behavior correspond with large performance drops (73% average loss) in deployed LLMs. This performance degradation is particularly prevalent when users from different latent groups and geographic regions interact with models and is correlated with natural prompt distribution shift over time. We systematically characterize how LLM instruction following ability degrades over time and between user groups. Our findings highlight the critical need for data-driven monitoring to ensure LLM performance remains stable across diverse and evolving user populations.
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