Advancing Process Verification for Large Language Models via Tree-Based Preference Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: He, Mingqian, Shen, Yongliang, Zhang, Wenqi, Tan, Zeqi, Lu, Weiming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author He, Mingqian
Shen, Yongliang
Zhang, Wenqi
Tan, Zeqi
Lu, Weiming
author_facet He, Mingqian
Shen, Yongliang
Zhang, Wenqi
Tan, Zeqi
Lu, Weiming
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable potential in handling complex reasoning tasks by generating step-by-step rationales.Some methods have proven effective in boosting accuracy by introducing extra verifiers to assess these paths. However, existing verifiers, typically trained on binary-labeled reasoning paths, fail to fully utilize the relative merits of intermediate steps, thereby limiting the effectiveness of the feedback provided. To overcome this limitation, we propose Tree-based Preference Learning Verifier (Tree-PLV), a novel approach that constructs reasoning trees via a best-first search algorithm and collects step-level paired data for preference training. Compared to traditional binary classification, step-level preferences more finely capture the nuances between reasoning steps, allowing for a more precise evaluation of the complete reasoning path. We empirically evaluate Tree-PLV across a range of arithmetic and commonsense reasoning tasks, where it significantly outperforms existing benchmarks. For instance, Tree-PLV achieved substantial performance gains over the Mistral-7B self-consistency baseline on GSM8K (67.55% to 82.79%), MATH (17.00% to 26.80%), CSQA (68.14% to 72.97%), and StrategyQA (82.86% to 83.25%).Additionally, our study explores the appropriate granularity for applying preference learning, revealing that step-level guidance provides feedback that better aligns with the evaluation of the reasoning process.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_00390
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Advancing Process Verification for Large Language Models via Tree-Based Preference Learning
He, Mingqian
Shen, Yongliang
Zhang, Wenqi
Tan, Zeqi
Lu, Weiming
Computation and Language
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable potential in handling complex reasoning tasks by generating step-by-step rationales.Some methods have proven effective in boosting accuracy by introducing extra verifiers to assess these paths. However, existing verifiers, typically trained on binary-labeled reasoning paths, fail to fully utilize the relative merits of intermediate steps, thereby limiting the effectiveness of the feedback provided. To overcome this limitation, we propose Tree-based Preference Learning Verifier (Tree-PLV), a novel approach that constructs reasoning trees via a best-first search algorithm and collects step-level paired data for preference training. Compared to traditional binary classification, step-level preferences more finely capture the nuances between reasoning steps, allowing for a more precise evaluation of the complete reasoning path. We empirically evaluate Tree-PLV across a range of arithmetic and commonsense reasoning tasks, where it significantly outperforms existing benchmarks. For instance, Tree-PLV achieved substantial performance gains over the Mistral-7B self-consistency baseline on GSM8K (67.55% to 82.79%), MATH (17.00% to 26.80%), CSQA (68.14% to 72.97%), and StrategyQA (82.86% to 83.25%).Additionally, our study explores the appropriate granularity for applying preference learning, revealing that step-level guidance provides feedback that better aligns with the evaluation of the reasoning process.
title Advancing Process Verification for Large Language Models via Tree-Based Preference Learning
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.00390