Align-Pro: A Principled Approach to Prompt Optimization for LLM Alignment

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Trivedi, Prashant, Chakraborty, Souradip, Reddy, Avinash, Aggarwal, Vaneet, Bedi, Amrit Singh, Atia, George K.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Trivedi, Prashant
Chakraborty, Souradip
Reddy, Avinash
Aggarwal, Vaneet
Bedi, Amrit Singh
Atia, George K.
author_facet Trivedi, Prashant
Chakraborty, Souradip
Reddy, Avinash
Aggarwal, Vaneet
Bedi, Amrit Singh
Atia, George K.
contents The alignment of large language models (LLMs) with human values is critical as these models become increasingly integrated into various societal and decision-making processes. Traditional methods, such as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), achieve alignment by fine-tuning model parameters, but these approaches are often computationally expensive and impractical when models are frozen or inaccessible for parameter modification. In contrast, prompt optimization is a viable alternative to RLHF for LLM alignment. While the existing literature has shown empirical promise of prompt optimization, its theoretical underpinning remains under-explored. We address this gap by formulating prompt optimization as an optimization problem and try to provide theoretical insights into the optimality of such a framework. To analyze the performance of the prompt optimization, we study theoretical suboptimality bounds and provide insights in terms of how prompt optimization depends upon the given prompter and target model. We also provide empirical validation through experiments on various datasets, demonstrating that prompt optimization can effectively align LLMs, even when parameter fine-tuning is not feasible.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_03486
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Align-Pro: A Principled Approach to Prompt Optimization for LLM Alignment
Trivedi, Prashant
Chakraborty, Souradip
Reddy, Avinash
Aggarwal, Vaneet
Bedi, Amrit Singh
Atia, George K.
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
The alignment of large language models (LLMs) with human values is critical as these models become increasingly integrated into various societal and decision-making processes. Traditional methods, such as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), achieve alignment by fine-tuning model parameters, but these approaches are often computationally expensive and impractical when models are frozen or inaccessible for parameter modification. In contrast, prompt optimization is a viable alternative to RLHF for LLM alignment. While the existing literature has shown empirical promise of prompt optimization, its theoretical underpinning remains under-explored. We address this gap by formulating prompt optimization as an optimization problem and try to provide theoretical insights into the optimality of such a framework. To analyze the performance of the prompt optimization, we study theoretical suboptimality bounds and provide insights in terms of how prompt optimization depends upon the given prompter and target model. We also provide empirical validation through experiments on various datasets, demonstrating that prompt optimization can effectively align LLMs, even when parameter fine-tuning is not feasible.
title Align-Pro: A Principled Approach to Prompt Optimization for LLM Alignment
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03486