Assessing the Macro and Micro Effects of Random Seeds on Fine-Tuning Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bui, Nghia, Savova, Guergana, Wang, Lijing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914138163249152
author Bui, Nghia
Savova, Guergana
Wang, Lijing
author_facet Bui, Nghia
Savova, Guergana
Wang, Lijing
contents The impact of random seeds in fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) has been largely overlooked despite its potential influence on model performance.In this study, we systematically evaluate the effects of random seeds on LLMs using the GLUE and SuperGLUE benchmarks. We analyze the macro-level impact through traditional metrics like accuracy and F1, calculating their mean and variance to quantify performance fluctuations. To capture the micro-level effects, we introduce a novel metric, consistency, measuring the stability of individual predictions across runs. Our experiments reveal significant variance at both macro and micro levels, underscoring the need for careful consideration of random seeds in fine-tuning and evaluation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_07329
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Assessing the Macro and Micro Effects of Random Seeds on Fine-Tuning Large Language Models
Bui, Nghia
Savova, Guergana
Wang, Lijing
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
The impact of random seeds in fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) has been largely overlooked despite its potential influence on model performance.In this study, we systematically evaluate the effects of random seeds on LLMs using the GLUE and SuperGLUE benchmarks. We analyze the macro-level impact through traditional metrics like accuracy and F1, calculating their mean and variance to quantify performance fluctuations. To capture the micro-level effects, we introduce a novel metric, consistency, measuring the stability of individual predictions across runs. Our experiments reveal significant variance at both macro and micro levels, underscoring the need for careful consideration of random seeds in fine-tuning and evaluation.
title Assessing the Macro and Micro Effects of Random Seeds on Fine-Tuning Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.07329