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Main Authors: Malik, Ali, Mayhew, Stephen, Piech, Chris, Bicknell, Klinton
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.03030
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author Malik, Ali
Mayhew, Stephen
Piech, Chris
Bicknell, Klinton
author_facet Malik, Ali
Mayhew, Stephen
Piech, Chris
Bicknell, Klinton
contents We study the problem of controlling the difficulty level of text generated by Large Language Models (LLMs) for contexts where end-users are not fully proficient, such as language learners. Using a novel framework, we evaluate the effectiveness of several key approaches for this task, including few-shot prompting, supervised finetuning, and reinforcement learning (RL), utilising both GPT-4 and open source alternatives like LLama2-7B and Mistral-7B. Our findings reveal a large performance gap between GPT-4 and the open source models when using prompt-based strategies. However, we show how to bridge this gap with a careful combination of finetuning and RL alignment. Our best model, CALM (CEFR-Aligned Language Model), surpasses the performance of GPT-4 and other strategies, at only a fraction of the cost. We further validate the quality of our results through a small-scale human study.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_03030
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From Tarzan to Tolkien: Controlling the Language Proficiency Level of LLMs for Content Generation
Malik, Ali
Mayhew, Stephen
Piech, Chris
Bicknell, Klinton
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
We study the problem of controlling the difficulty level of text generated by Large Language Models (LLMs) for contexts where end-users are not fully proficient, such as language learners. Using a novel framework, we evaluate the effectiveness of several key approaches for this task, including few-shot prompting, supervised finetuning, and reinforcement learning (RL), utilising both GPT-4 and open source alternatives like LLama2-7B and Mistral-7B. Our findings reveal a large performance gap between GPT-4 and the open source models when using prompt-based strategies. However, we show how to bridge this gap with a careful combination of finetuning and RL alignment. Our best model, CALM (CEFR-Aligned Language Model), surpasses the performance of GPT-4 and other strategies, at only a fraction of the cost. We further validate the quality of our results through a small-scale human study.
title From Tarzan to Tolkien: Controlling the Language Proficiency Level of LLMs for Content Generation
topic Computation and Language
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.03030