arXiv:2606.26091cs.LGcs.AI2026-06被引 2

自蒸馏降低输出多样性,导致模型策略趋同。

On-Policy Self-Distillation with Sampled Demonstrations Reduces Output Diversity

  • 用采样正确轨迹作为上下文,让模型自我指导生成
  • 自蒸馏使准确率提升但多样性显著下降,分布趋于单一
  • 适合追求高精度但不需多样化策略的场景

基于策略的自蒸馏通过单个模型同时充当教师和学生,以正确示范为条件提供细粒度的标记级反馈,实现高通过率(pass@1)。然而,我们发现其隐含代价是轨迹多样性下降,且 pass@k 曲线趋于平缓(即增加生成轨迹数无法进一步提升准确率)。问题根源在于自蒸馏设计中的累积偏差:教师在采样正确轨迹的条件下评估学生生成轨迹,反馈被模型自身偏见所扭曲。理论分析表明,最优自蒸馏策略通过点对点条件互信息调整基础分布,不同于理想强化学习保留等效正确轨迹的概率比,而会放大已有概率差距,集中于主导模式。在控制的图路径寻找任务和科学问答基准上,自蒸馏模型平均性能达到或超过强化学习水平,但功能性与语义多样性显著降低,在需要多样化策略的分布外场景中表现失败。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

On-policy self-distillation achieves strong pass@1 accuracy by using a single model as both teacher and student, with the teacher conditioned on a correct demonstration to provide dense token-level feedback. We show that this could come at a hidden cost: rollout diversity decreases and pass@k curves flatten (i.e., generating more rollouts fails to improve accuracy). We trace this to compounding biases in the design of self-distillation with sampled demonstrations. The teacher scores each student rollout while conditioned on a sampled correct rollout, channeling its feedback through the model's own biases. We theoretically analyze the optimal self-distillation policy and show that it tilts the base distribution by a pointwise conditional mutual information score between the student's rollout and the correct rollout used as context. Unlike the ideal optimal on-policy reinforcement learning (RL), which preserves probability ratios among equally correct rollouts, self-distillation can amplify existing probability gaps, concentrating mass on already-dominant modes. On a controlled graph path-finding task and science question-answering benchmarks, self-distilled models match or exceed RL on average performance but exhibit substantially lower functional and semantic diversity, failing on out-of-distribution settings that require diverse strategies.

自蒸馏多样性强化学习轨迹生成

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