Small LLMs Are Weak Tool Learners: A Multi-LLM Agent

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Shen, Weizhou, Li, Chenliang, Chen, Hongzhan, Yan, Ming, Quan, Xiaojun, Chen, Hehong, Zhang, Ji, Huang, Fei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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_version_ 1866909108564656128
author Shen, Weizhou
Li, Chenliang
Chen, Hongzhan
Yan, Ming
Quan, Xiaojun
Chen, Hehong
Zhang, Ji
Huang, Fei
author_facet Shen, Weizhou
Li, Chenliang
Chen, Hongzhan
Yan, Ming
Quan, Xiaojun
Chen, Hehong
Zhang, Ji
Huang, Fei
contents Large Language Model (LLM) agents significantly extend the capabilities of standalone LLMs, empowering them to interact with external tools (e.g., APIs, functions) and complete various tasks in a self-directed fashion. The challenge of tool use demands that LLMs not only understand user queries and generate answers accurately but also excel in task planning, tool invocation, and result summarization. While traditional works focus on training a single LLM with all these capabilities, performance limitations become apparent, particularly with smaller models. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel approach that decomposes the aforementioned capabilities into a planner, caller, and summarizer. Each component is implemented by a single LLM that focuses on a specific capability and collaborates with others to accomplish the task. This modular framework facilitates individual updates and the potential use of smaller LLMs for building each capability. To effectively train this framework, we introduce a two-stage training paradigm. First, we fine-tune a backbone LLM on the entire dataset without discriminating sub-tasks, providing the model with a comprehensive understanding of the task. Second, the fine-tuned LLM is used to instantiate the planner, caller, and summarizer respectively, which are continually fine-tuned on respective sub-tasks. Evaluation across various tool-use benchmarks illustrates that our proposed multi-LLM framework surpasses the traditional single-LLM approach, highlighting its efficacy and advantages in tool learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_07324
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Small LLMs Are Weak Tool Learners: A Multi-LLM Agent
Shen, Weizhou
Li, Chenliang
Chen, Hongzhan
Yan, Ming
Quan, Xiaojun
Chen, Hehong
Zhang, Ji
Huang, Fei
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Large Language Model (LLM) agents significantly extend the capabilities of standalone LLMs, empowering them to interact with external tools (e.g., APIs, functions) and complete various tasks in a self-directed fashion. The challenge of tool use demands that LLMs not only understand user queries and generate answers accurately but also excel in task planning, tool invocation, and result summarization. While traditional works focus on training a single LLM with all these capabilities, performance limitations become apparent, particularly with smaller models. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel approach that decomposes the aforementioned capabilities into a planner, caller, and summarizer. Each component is implemented by a single LLM that focuses on a specific capability and collaborates with others to accomplish the task. This modular framework facilitates individual updates and the potential use of smaller LLMs for building each capability. To effectively train this framework, we introduce a two-stage training paradigm. First, we fine-tune a backbone LLM on the entire dataset without discriminating sub-tasks, providing the model with a comprehensive understanding of the task. Second, the fine-tuned LLM is used to instantiate the planner, caller, and summarizer respectively, which are continually fine-tuned on respective sub-tasks. Evaluation across various tool-use benchmarks illustrates that our proposed multi-LLM framework surpasses the traditional single-LLM approach, highlighting its efficacy and advantages in tool learning.
title Small LLMs Are Weak Tool Learners: A Multi-LLM Agent
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.07324