Top-H Decoding: Adapting the Creativity and Coherence with Bounded Entropy in Text Generation
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866917475838328832 |
|---|---|
| author | Potraghloo, Erfan Baghaei Azizi, Seyedarmin Kundu, Souvik Pedram, Massoud |
| author_facet | Potraghloo, Erfan Baghaei Azizi, Seyedarmin Kundu, Souvik Pedram, Massoud |
| contents | Large language models (LLMs), despite their impressive performance across a wide range of tasks, often struggle to balance two competing objectives in open-ended text generation: fostering diversity and creativity while preserving logical coherence. Existing truncated sampling techniques, including temperature scaling, top-\$p\$ (nucleus) sampling, and min-\$p\$ sampling, aim to manage this trade-off. However, they exhibit limitations, particularly in the effective incorporation of the confidence of the model into the corresponding sampling strategy. For example, min-\$p\$ sampling relies on a single top token as a heuristic for confidence, eventually underutilizing the information of the probability distribution. Toward effective incorporation of the confidence of the model, in this paper, we present **top-H** decoding. We first establish the theoretical foundation of the interplay between creativity and coherence in truncated sampling by formulating an **entropy-constrained minimum divergence** problem. We then prove this minimization problem to be equivalent to an **entropy-constrained mass maximization** (ECMM) problem, which is NP-hard. Finally, we present top-H decoding, a computationally efficient greedy algorithm to solve the ECMM problem. Extensive empirical evaluations demonstrate that top-H outperforms the state-of-the-art (SoTA) alternative of min-\$p\$ sampling by up to **25.63%** on creative writing benchmarks, while maintaining robustness on question-answering datasets such as GPQA, GSM8K, and MT-Bench. Additionally, an *LLM-as-judge* evaluation confirms that top-H indeed produces coherent outputs even at higher temperatures, where creativity is especially critical. In summary, top-H advances SoTA in open-ended text generation and can be *easily integrated* into creative writing applications. The code is available at https://github.com/ErfanBaghaei/Top-H-Decoding. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_02510 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Top-H Decoding: Adapting the Creativity and Coherence with Bounded Entropy in Text Generation Potraghloo, Erfan Baghaei Azizi, Seyedarmin Kundu, Souvik Pedram, Massoud Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Large language models (LLMs), despite their impressive performance across a wide range of tasks, often struggle to balance two competing objectives in open-ended text generation: fostering diversity and creativity while preserving logical coherence. Existing truncated sampling techniques, including temperature scaling, top-\$p\$ (nucleus) sampling, and min-\$p\$ sampling, aim to manage this trade-off. However, they exhibit limitations, particularly in the effective incorporation of the confidence of the model into the corresponding sampling strategy. For example, min-\$p\$ sampling relies on a single top token as a heuristic for confidence, eventually underutilizing the information of the probability distribution. Toward effective incorporation of the confidence of the model, in this paper, we present **top-H** decoding. We first establish the theoretical foundation of the interplay between creativity and coherence in truncated sampling by formulating an **entropy-constrained minimum divergence** problem. We then prove this minimization problem to be equivalent to an **entropy-constrained mass maximization** (ECMM) problem, which is NP-hard. Finally, we present top-H decoding, a computationally efficient greedy algorithm to solve the ECMM problem. Extensive empirical evaluations demonstrate that top-H outperforms the state-of-the-art (SoTA) alternative of min-\$p\$ sampling by up to **25.63%** on creative writing benchmarks, while maintaining robustness on question-answering datasets such as GPQA, GSM8K, and MT-Bench. Additionally, an *LLM-as-judge* evaluation confirms that top-H indeed produces coherent outputs even at higher temperatures, where creativity is especially critical. In summary, top-H advances SoTA in open-ended text generation and can be *easily integrated* into creative writing applications. The code is available at https://github.com/ErfanBaghaei/Top-H-Decoding. |
| title | Top-H Decoding: Adapting the Creativity and Coherence with Bounded Entropy in Text Generation |
| topic | Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02510 |