Merging Smarter, Generalizing Better: Enhancing Model Merging on OOD Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Zhang, Bingjie, Li, Hongkang, Shi, Changlong, Rong, Guowei, Zhao, He, Wang, Dongsheng, Guo, Dandan, Wang, Meng
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Zhang, Bingjie
Li, Hongkang
Shi, Changlong
Rong, Guowei
Zhao, He
Wang, Dongsheng
Guo, Dandan
Wang, Meng
author_facet Zhang, Bingjie
Li, Hongkang
Shi, Changlong
Rong, Guowei
Zhao, He
Wang, Dongsheng
Guo, Dandan
Wang, Meng
contents Multi-task learning (MTL) concurrently trains a model on diverse task datasets to exploit common features, thereby improving overall performance across the tasks. Recent studies have dedicated efforts to merging multiple independent model parameters into a unified model for MTL, thus circumventing the need for training data and expanding the scope of applicable scenarios of MTL. However, current approaches to model merging predominantly concentrate on enhancing performance within in-domain (ID) datasets, often overlooking their efficacy on out-of-domain (OOD) datasets. In this work, we proposed LwPTV (Layer-wise Pruning Task Vector) by building a saliency score, measuring the redundancy of parameters in task vectors. Designed in this way ours can achieve mask vector for each task and thus perform layer-wise pruning on the task vectors, only keeping the pre-trained model parameters at the corresponding layer in merged model. Owing to its flexibility, our method can be seamlessly integrated with most of existing model merging methods to improve their performance on OOD tasks. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the application of our method results in substantial enhancements in OOD performance while preserving the ability on ID tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_09093
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Merging Smarter, Generalizing Better: Enhancing Model Merging on OOD Data
Zhang, Bingjie
Li, Hongkang
Shi, Changlong
Rong, Guowei
Zhao, He
Wang, Dongsheng
Guo, Dandan
Wang, Meng
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Multi-task learning (MTL) concurrently trains a model on diverse task datasets to exploit common features, thereby improving overall performance across the tasks. Recent studies have dedicated efforts to merging multiple independent model parameters into a unified model for MTL, thus circumventing the need for training data and expanding the scope of applicable scenarios of MTL. However, current approaches to model merging predominantly concentrate on enhancing performance within in-domain (ID) datasets, often overlooking their efficacy on out-of-domain (OOD) datasets. In this work, we proposed LwPTV (Layer-wise Pruning Task Vector) by building a saliency score, measuring the redundancy of parameters in task vectors. Designed in this way ours can achieve mask vector for each task and thus perform layer-wise pruning on the task vectors, only keeping the pre-trained model parameters at the corresponding layer in merged model. Owing to its flexibility, our method can be seamlessly integrated with most of existing model merging methods to improve their performance on OOD tasks. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the application of our method results in substantial enhancements in OOD performance while preserving the ability on ID tasks.
title Merging Smarter, Generalizing Better: Enhancing Model Merging on OOD Data
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09093