让大模型直接生成和理解机器符号,打通语言与结构化数据的鸿沟。
When Machines Speak: A Unified Generative Framework for Integrating Machine-Native Symbols into Pretrained Large Language Models

- 将机器符号融入大模型词汇表,与自然语言统一生成。
- 在推荐和法律预测任务中均超越基线,提升性能。
- 适合需要处理结构化符号的AI系统开发者使用。
许多现实世界的AI系统使用离散的机器原生符号表示实体、行为和结构化信息,这类表示紧凑且保留任务相关结构,但超出预训练大语言模型(LLM)的文本标记空间,造成语言建模与结构化预测之间的根本性断裂。我们提出UniLang,一种统一生成框架,通过将机器原生符号作为与自然语言标记并列的一等生成单元,扩展预训练LLM的词汇和嵌入空间,实现文本与符号标记在单一自回归目标下的联合建模与生成。该统一接口使预训练LLM能直接操作机器原生表示,无需将其转化为自然语言或依赖特定任务架构。我们在两个结构迥异的任务——序列推荐与法律判例预测——上评估UniLang,涵盖不同领域和类型的结构化预测。在两项任务中,UniLang均持续优于强基线,展示出将预训练LLM拓展至语言之外,并作为异构机器原生表示的通用生成建模核心路径。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Many real-world AI systems represent entities, behaviors, and structured information using discrete machine-native symbols rather than natural language. While these representations are compact and preserve task-relevant structure, they lie outside the linguistic token space of pretrained large language models (LLMs), creating a fundamental divide between language modeling and structured prediction. We introduce UniLang, a unified generative framework that bridges this divide by extending pretrained LLMs to treat machine-native symbols as first-class generative units alongside natural-language tokens. UniLang expands the LLM's vocabulary and embedding space with grounded machine-native representations, enabling textual and symbolic tokens to be jointly modeled and generated under a single autoregressive objective. This unified interface allows pretrained LLMs to directly operate on machine-native representations without requiring them to be verbalized as natural language or relying on task-specific architectures. We evaluate UniLang on two structurally distinct tasks, sequential recommendation and legal precedent prediction, spanning different domains and types of structured prediction. Across both tasks, UniLang consistently outperforms strong baselines, demonstrating a path toward extending pretrained LLMs beyond language and using them as a common generative modeling backbone for heterogeneous machine-native representations.
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