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Main Authors: Uppaal, Rheeya, Dey, Apratim, He, Yiting, Zhong, Yiqiao, Hu, Junjie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13967
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author Uppaal, Rheeya
Dey, Apratim
He, Yiting
Zhong, Yiqiao
Hu, Junjie
author_facet Uppaal, Rheeya
Dey, Apratim
He, Yiting
Zhong, Yiqiao
Hu, Junjie
contents Recent alignment algorithms such as direct preference optimization (DPO) have been developed to improve the safety of large language models (LLMs) by training these models to match human behaviors exemplified by preference data. However, these methods are both computationally intensive and lacking in controllability and transparency, inhibiting their widespread use. Furthermore, these tuning-based methods require large-scale preference data for training and are susceptible to noisy preference data. In this paper, we introduce a tuning-free alignment alternative, ProFS (Projection Filter for Subspaces), and demonstrate its effectiveness under the use case of toxicity reduction. Grounded on theory from factor analysis, ProFS is a sample-efficient model editing approach that identifies a toxic subspace in the model parameter space and reduces model toxicity by projecting away the detected subspace. The toxic subspace is identified by extracting preference data embeddings from the language model, and removing non-toxic information from these embeddings. We show that ProFS is more sample-efficient than DPO, further showcasing greater robustness to noisy data. Finally, we attempt to connect tuning based alignment with editing, by establishing both theoretical and empirical connections between ProFS and DPO, showing that ProFS can be interpreted as a denoised version of a single DPO step.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_13967
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Model Editing as a Robust and Denoised variant of DPO: A Case Study on Toxicity
Uppaal, Rheeya
Dey, Apratim
He, Yiting
Zhong, Yiqiao
Hu, Junjie
Computation and Language
Recent alignment algorithms such as direct preference optimization (DPO) have been developed to improve the safety of large language models (LLMs) by training these models to match human behaviors exemplified by preference data. However, these methods are both computationally intensive and lacking in controllability and transparency, inhibiting their widespread use. Furthermore, these tuning-based methods require large-scale preference data for training and are susceptible to noisy preference data. In this paper, we introduce a tuning-free alignment alternative, ProFS (Projection Filter for Subspaces), and demonstrate its effectiveness under the use case of toxicity reduction. Grounded on theory from factor analysis, ProFS is a sample-efficient model editing approach that identifies a toxic subspace in the model parameter space and reduces model toxicity by projecting away the detected subspace. The toxic subspace is identified by extracting preference data embeddings from the language model, and removing non-toxic information from these embeddings. We show that ProFS is more sample-efficient than DPO, further showcasing greater robustness to noisy data. Finally, we attempt to connect tuning based alignment with editing, by establishing both theoretical and empirical connections between ProFS and DPO, showing that ProFS can be interpreted as a denoised version of a single DPO step.
title Model Editing as a Robust and Denoised variant of DPO: A Case Study on Toxicity
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13967