ScaLearn: Simple and Highly Parameter-Efficient Task Transfer by Learning to Scale

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Frohmann, Markus, Holtermann, Carolin, Masoudian, Shahed, Lauscher, Anne, Rekabsaz, Navid
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Frohmann, Markus
Holtermann, Carolin
Masoudian, Shahed
Lauscher, Anne
Rekabsaz, Navid
author_facet Frohmann, Markus
Holtermann, Carolin
Masoudian, Shahed
Lauscher, Anne
Rekabsaz, Navid
contents Multi-task learning (MTL) has shown considerable practical benefits, particularly when using language models (LMs). While this is commonly achieved by learning $n$ tasks under a joint optimization procedure, some methods, such as AdapterFusion, divide the problem into two stages: (i) task learning, where knowledge specific to a task is encapsulated within sets of parameters (e.g., adapters), and (ii) transfer, where this already learned knowledge is leveraged for a target task. This separation of concerns provides numerous benefits (e.g., promoting reusability). However, current two-stage MTL introduces a substantial number of additional parameters. We address this issue by leveraging the usefulness of linearly scaling the output representations of source adapters for transfer learning. We introduce ScaLearn, a simple and highly parameter-efficient two-stage MTL method that capitalizes on the knowledge of the source tasks by learning a minimal set of scaling parameters that enable effective transfer to a target task. Our experiments on three benchmarks (GLUE, SuperGLUE, and HumSet) and two encoder LMs show that ScaLearn consistently outperforms strong baselines with a small number of transfer parameters (~ $0.35$% of those of AdapterFusion). Remarkably, we observe that ScaLearn maintains its strong abilities even when further reducing parameters, achieving competitive results with only $8$ transfer parameters per target task. Our proposed approach thus demonstrates the power of simple scaling as a promise for more efficient task transfer.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_01217
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ScaLearn: Simple and Highly Parameter-Efficient Task Transfer by Learning to Scale
Frohmann, Markus
Holtermann, Carolin
Masoudian, Shahed
Lauscher, Anne
Rekabsaz, Navid
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Multi-task learning (MTL) has shown considerable practical benefits, particularly when using language models (LMs). While this is commonly achieved by learning $n$ tasks under a joint optimization procedure, some methods, such as AdapterFusion, divide the problem into two stages: (i) task learning, where knowledge specific to a task is encapsulated within sets of parameters (e.g., adapters), and (ii) transfer, where this already learned knowledge is leveraged for a target task. This separation of concerns provides numerous benefits (e.g., promoting reusability). However, current two-stage MTL introduces a substantial number of additional parameters. We address this issue by leveraging the usefulness of linearly scaling the output representations of source adapters for transfer learning. We introduce ScaLearn, a simple and highly parameter-efficient two-stage MTL method that capitalizes on the knowledge of the source tasks by learning a minimal set of scaling parameters that enable effective transfer to a target task. Our experiments on three benchmarks (GLUE, SuperGLUE, and HumSet) and two encoder LMs show that ScaLearn consistently outperforms strong baselines with a small number of transfer parameters (~ $0.35$% of those of AdapterFusion). Remarkably, we observe that ScaLearn maintains its strong abilities even when further reducing parameters, achieving competitive results with only $8$ transfer parameters per target task. Our proposed approach thus demonstrates the power of simple scaling as a promise for more efficient task transfer.
title ScaLearn: Simple and Highly Parameter-Efficient Task Transfer by Learning to Scale
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.01217