Synergistic Weak-Strong Collaboration by Aligning Preferences

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Jiao, Yizhu, Zhang, Xuchao, Wang, Zhaoyang, Ma, Yubo, Deng, Zhun, Wang, Rujia, Bansal, Chetan, Rajmohan, Saravan, Han, Jiawei, Yao, Huaxiu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Jiao, Yizhu
Zhang, Xuchao
Wang, Zhaoyang
Ma, Yubo
Deng, Zhun
Wang, Rujia
Bansal, Chetan
Rajmohan, Saravan
Han, Jiawei
Yao, Huaxiu
author_facet Jiao, Yizhu
Zhang, Xuchao
Wang, Zhaoyang
Ma, Yubo
Deng, Zhun
Wang, Rujia
Bansal, Chetan
Rajmohan, Saravan
Han, Jiawei
Yao, Huaxiu
contents Current Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in general reasoning yet struggle with specialized tasks requiring proprietary or domain-specific knowledge. Fine-tuning large models for every niche application is often infeasible due to black-box constraints and high computational overhead. To address this, we propose a collaborative framework that pairs a specialized weak model with a general strong model. The weak model, tailored to specific domains, produces initial drafts and background information, while the strong model leverages its advanced reasoning to refine these drafts, extending LLMs' capabilities to critical yet specialized tasks. To optimize this collaboration, we introduce a collaborative feedback to fine-tunes the weak model, which quantifies the influence of the weak model's contributions in the collaboration procedure and establishes preference pairs to guide preference tuning of the weak model. We validate our framework through experiments on three domains. We find that the collaboration significantly outperforms each model alone by leveraging complementary strengths. Moreover, aligning the weak model with the collaborative preference further enhances overall performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_15188
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Synergistic Weak-Strong Collaboration by Aligning Preferences
Jiao, Yizhu
Zhang, Xuchao
Wang, Zhaoyang
Ma, Yubo
Deng, Zhun
Wang, Rujia
Bansal, Chetan
Rajmohan, Saravan
Han, Jiawei
Yao, Huaxiu
Artificial Intelligence
Current Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in general reasoning yet struggle with specialized tasks requiring proprietary or domain-specific knowledge. Fine-tuning large models for every niche application is often infeasible due to black-box constraints and high computational overhead. To address this, we propose a collaborative framework that pairs a specialized weak model with a general strong model. The weak model, tailored to specific domains, produces initial drafts and background information, while the strong model leverages its advanced reasoning to refine these drafts, extending LLMs' capabilities to critical yet specialized tasks. To optimize this collaboration, we introduce a collaborative feedback to fine-tunes the weak model, which quantifies the influence of the weak model's contributions in the collaboration procedure and establishes preference pairs to guide preference tuning of the weak model. We validate our framework through experiments on three domains. We find that the collaboration significantly outperforms each model alone by leveraging complementary strengths. Moreover, aligning the weak model with the collaborative preference further enhances overall performance.
title Synergistic Weak-Strong Collaboration by Aligning Preferences
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.15188