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Autori principali: Liu, Guangliang, Xue, Zhiyu, Zhang, Xitong, Wang, Rongrong, Johnson, Kristen Marie
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.23496
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author Liu, Guangliang
Xue, Zhiyu
Zhang, Xitong
Wang, Rongrong
Johnson, Kristen Marie
author_facet Liu, Guangliang
Xue, Zhiyu
Zhang, Xitong
Wang, Rongrong
Johnson, Kristen Marie
contents Self-correction is one of the most amazing emerging capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), enabling LLMs to self-modify an inappropriate output given a natural language feedback which describes the problems of that output. Moral self-correction is a post-hoc approach correcting unethical generations without requiring a gradient update, making it both computationally lightweight and capable of preserving the language modeling ability. Previous works have shown that LLMs can self-debias, and it has been reported that small models, i.e., those with less than 22B parameters, are not capable of moral self-correction. However, there is no direct proof as to why such smaller models fall short of moral self-correction, though previous research hypothesizes that larger models are skilled in following instructions and understanding abstract social norms. In this paper, we empirically validate this hypothesis in the context of social stereotyping, through meticulous prompting. Our experimental results indicate that (i) surprisingly, 3.8B LLMs with proper safety alignment fine-tuning can achieve very good moral self-correction performance, highlighting the significant effects of safety alignment; and (ii) small LLMs are indeed weaker than larger-scale models in terms of comprehending social norms and self-explanation through CoT, but all scales of LLMs show bad self-correction performance given unethical instructions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_23496
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Smaller Large Language Models Can Do Moral Self-Correction
Liu, Guangliang
Xue, Zhiyu
Zhang, Xitong
Wang, Rongrong
Johnson, Kristen Marie
Computation and Language
Self-correction is one of the most amazing emerging capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), enabling LLMs to self-modify an inappropriate output given a natural language feedback which describes the problems of that output. Moral self-correction is a post-hoc approach correcting unethical generations without requiring a gradient update, making it both computationally lightweight and capable of preserving the language modeling ability. Previous works have shown that LLMs can self-debias, and it has been reported that small models, i.e., those with less than 22B parameters, are not capable of moral self-correction. However, there is no direct proof as to why such smaller models fall short of moral self-correction, though previous research hypothesizes that larger models are skilled in following instructions and understanding abstract social norms. In this paper, we empirically validate this hypothesis in the context of social stereotyping, through meticulous prompting. Our experimental results indicate that (i) surprisingly, 3.8B LLMs with proper safety alignment fine-tuning can achieve very good moral self-correction performance, highlighting the significant effects of safety alignment; and (ii) small LLMs are indeed weaker than larger-scale models in terms of comprehending social norms and self-explanation through CoT, but all scales of LLMs show bad self-correction performance given unethical instructions.
title Smaller Large Language Models Can Do Moral Self-Correction
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.23496