Let Me Speak Freely? A Study on the Impact of Format Restrictions on Performance of Large Language Models
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2024
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866917801678077952 |
|---|---|
| author | Tam, Zhi Rui Wu, Cheng-Kuang Tsai, Yi-Lin Lin, Chieh-Yen Lee, Hung-yi Chen, Yun-Nung |
| author_facet | Tam, Zhi Rui Wu, Cheng-Kuang Tsai, Yi-Lin Lin, Chieh-Yen Lee, Hung-yi Chen, Yun-Nung |
| contents | Structured generation, the process of producing content in standardized formats like JSON and XML, is widely utilized in real-world applications to extract key output information from large language models (LLMs). This study investigates whether such constraints on generation space impact LLMs abilities, including reasoning and domain knowledge comprehension. Specifically, we evaluate LLMs performance when restricted to adhere to structured formats versus generating free-form responses across various common tasks. Surprisingly, we observe a significant decline in LLMs reasoning abilities under format restrictions. Furthermore, we find that stricter format constraints generally lead to greater performance degradation in reasoning tasks. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_02442 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Let Me Speak Freely? A Study on the Impact of Format Restrictions on Performance of Large Language Models Tam, Zhi Rui Wu, Cheng-Kuang Tsai, Yi-Lin Lin, Chieh-Yen Lee, Hung-yi Chen, Yun-Nung Computation and Language Structured generation, the process of producing content in standardized formats like JSON and XML, is widely utilized in real-world applications to extract key output information from large language models (LLMs). This study investigates whether such constraints on generation space impact LLMs abilities, including reasoning and domain knowledge comprehension. Specifically, we evaluate LLMs performance when restricted to adhere to structured formats versus generating free-form responses across various common tasks. Surprisingly, we observe a significant decline in LLMs reasoning abilities under format restrictions. Furthermore, we find that stricter format constraints generally lead to greater performance degradation in reasoning tasks. |
| title | Let Me Speak Freely? A Study on the Impact of Format Restrictions on Performance of Large Language Models |
| topic | Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.02442 |