Eliminating Biased Length Reliance of Direct Preference Optimization via Down-Sampled KL Divergence

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lu, Junru, Li, Jiazheng, An, Siyu, Zhao, Meng, He, Yulan, Yin, Di, Sun, Xing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Lu, Junru
Li, Jiazheng
An, Siyu
Zhao, Meng
He, Yulan
Yin, Di
Sun, Xing
author_facet Lu, Junru
Li, Jiazheng
An, Siyu
Zhao, Meng
He, Yulan
Yin, Di
Sun, Xing
contents Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as a prominent algorithm for the direct and robust alignment of Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences, offering a more straightforward alternative to the complex Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). Despite its promising efficacy, DPO faces a notable drawback: "verbosity", a common over-optimization phenomenon also observed in RLHF. While previous studies mainly attributed verbosity to biased labels within the data, we propose that the issue also stems from an inherent algorithmic length reliance in DPO. Specifically, we suggest that the discrepancy between sequence-level Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergences between chosen and rejected sequences, used in DPO, results in overestimated or underestimated rewards due to varying token lengths. Empirically, we utilize datasets with different label lengths to demonstrate the presence of biased rewards. We then introduce an effective downsampling approach, named SamPO, to eliminate potential length reliance. Our experimental evaluations, conducted across three LLMs of varying scales and a diverse array of conditional and open-ended benchmarks, highlight the efficacy of SamPO in mitigating verbosity, achieving improvements of 5% to 12% over DPO through debaised rewards. Our codes can be accessed at: https://github.com/LuJunru/SamPO/.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_10957
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Eliminating Biased Length Reliance of Direct Preference Optimization via Down-Sampled KL Divergence
Lu, Junru
Li, Jiazheng
An, Siyu
Zhao, Meng
He, Yulan
Yin, Di
Sun, Xing
Computation and Language
Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as a prominent algorithm for the direct and robust alignment of Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences, offering a more straightforward alternative to the complex Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). Despite its promising efficacy, DPO faces a notable drawback: "verbosity", a common over-optimization phenomenon also observed in RLHF. While previous studies mainly attributed verbosity to biased labels within the data, we propose that the issue also stems from an inherent algorithmic length reliance in DPO. Specifically, we suggest that the discrepancy between sequence-level Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergences between chosen and rejected sequences, used in DPO, results in overestimated or underestimated rewards due to varying token lengths. Empirically, we utilize datasets with different label lengths to demonstrate the presence of biased rewards. We then introduce an effective downsampling approach, named SamPO, to eliminate potential length reliance. Our experimental evaluations, conducted across three LLMs of varying scales and a diverse array of conditional and open-ended benchmarks, highlight the efficacy of SamPO in mitigating verbosity, achieving improvements of 5% to 12% over DPO through debaised rewards. Our codes can be accessed at: https://github.com/LuJunru/SamPO/.
title Eliminating Biased Length Reliance of Direct Preference Optimization via Down-Sampled KL Divergence
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.10957