arXiv:2607.17558cs.AI2026-07被引 1

自蒸馏在搜索代理中失效,因模型陷入固定输出模式。

Why Does Feedback-Augmented Self-Distillation Fail to Improve Retrieval-Interleaved Search Agents?

论文配图:Why Does Feedback-Augmented Self-Distillation Fail to Improve Retrieval-Interleaved Search Agents?
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用成功示例增强自蒸馏,让模型模仿自身输出。
  • 发现模型产生看似多样实则重复的搜索路径,自蒸馏信号无效。
  • 引入EMA教师稳定训练,提升长期性能,适合复杂推理任务研究者。

在线策略自蒸馏(OPSD)为训练大语言模型提供了无需独立教师模型的前景,但在复杂代理任务中的有效性仍不明确。本文提出反馈增强型自蒸馏(FA-SD),一种用于搜索代理的自蒸馏算法,利用成功示范作为特权信息。我们发现,模型会依赖反复出现的推理与搜索输出模板,生成看似多样但与输入问题无关的轨迹,导致基于KL的自蒸馏信号缺乏信息量。我们称此现象为解码坍缩,一种现有评估指标难以察觉的失败模式。为理解其成因,我们发现尽管自教师表现更强,学习过程仍因监督信号不一致而本质上不稳定。我们将这种不一致性分解为模型不一致与提示不一致,并证明后者显著削弱了监督信号质量,限制了自教师学习效果。为缓解该问题,我们引入指数移动平均(EMA)教师,以稳定自教师并提供更一致的监督信号。尽管EMA教师需经过预热阶段,期间性能可能暂时下降,但最终能通过更稳定的监督提升模型表现。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

On-policy self-distillation (OPSD) offers a promising approach for training large language models without relying on a separate teacher model. However, its effectiveness on complex agentic tasks remains largely unexplored. In this work, we instantiate Feedback-Augmented Self-Distillation (FA-SD), a self-distillation algorithm for agentic search that leverages successful demonstrations as privileged information. We identify that models can rely on recurring reasoning-and-search output templates, producing trajectories that appear diverse but are largely agnostic to the input question, making the KL-based self-distillation signal uninformative. We term this phenomenon decoding collapse, a failure mode that can be missed by existing evaluation metrics. To understand its underlying cause, we show that although the self-teacher achieves stronger performance, learning remains inherently unstable due to inconsistent supervision signals. We further decompose this inconsistency into model inconsistency and prompt inconsistency, and show that the latter can significantly degrade the quality of the supervision signal, limiting the effectiveness of self-teacher learning. To mitigate this inconsistency, we introduce an exponential moving average (EMA) teacher to stabilize the self-teacher and provide more consistent supervision signals. Although the EMA teacher requires a warm-up phase during which performance may temporarily regress, it ultimately improves model performance by providing more stable supervision.

自蒸馏搜索代理大模型训练

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