GRAD: Generative Retrieval-Aligned Demonstration Sampler for Efficient Few-Shot Reasoning

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Main Authors: Gabouj, Oussama, Charaf, Kamel, Zakazov, Ivan, Baldwin, Nicolas, West, Robert
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Gabouj, Oussama
Charaf, Kamel
Zakazov, Ivan
Baldwin, Nicolas
West, Robert
author_facet Gabouj, Oussama
Charaf, Kamel
Zakazov, Ivan
Baldwin, Nicolas
West, Robert
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) achieve strong performance across diverse tasks, but their effectiveness often depends on the quality of the provided context. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enriches prompts with external information, but its reliance on static databases constrains adaptability and can result in irrelevant demonstrations. In this work, we propose a Generative Retrieval-Aligned Demonstrator (GRAD), a dynamic demonstration-based approach where an LLM model is trained to generate input-specific concise demonstrations. By tailoring demonstrations to each input, our method offers better contextual support than traditional RAG approaches. We demonstrate the superiority of GRAD under budget constraints, where we limit both the number of tokens used per demonstration and the number of tokens used for the final output. Trained solely on a math dataset, GRAD consistently outperforms strong baselines on Qwen2.5-14B across mathematical reasoning and advanced STEM questions, highlighting GRAD's robust generalization to out-of-distribution (OOD) domains such as physics, chemistry, and computer science. Furthermore, we show that demonstrations generated by trained smaller models can effectively guide larger target models, reducing training costs while maintaining competitive accuracy. Overall, this work introduces a scalable demonstration generator model presenting the first step toward a dynamic few-shot learning paradigm in resource-constrained settings. We release the code used for the project.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_01165
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GRAD: Generative Retrieval-Aligned Demonstration Sampler for Efficient Few-Shot Reasoning
Gabouj, Oussama
Charaf, Kamel
Zakazov, Ivan
Baldwin, Nicolas
West, Robert
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Large Language Models (LLMs) achieve strong performance across diverse tasks, but their effectiveness often depends on the quality of the provided context. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enriches prompts with external information, but its reliance on static databases constrains adaptability and can result in irrelevant demonstrations. In this work, we propose a Generative Retrieval-Aligned Demonstrator (GRAD), a dynamic demonstration-based approach where an LLM model is trained to generate input-specific concise demonstrations. By tailoring demonstrations to each input, our method offers better contextual support than traditional RAG approaches. We demonstrate the superiority of GRAD under budget constraints, where we limit both the number of tokens used per demonstration and the number of tokens used for the final output. Trained solely on a math dataset, GRAD consistently outperforms strong baselines on Qwen2.5-14B across mathematical reasoning and advanced STEM questions, highlighting GRAD's robust generalization to out-of-distribution (OOD) domains such as physics, chemistry, and computer science. Furthermore, we show that demonstrations generated by trained smaller models can effectively guide larger target models, reducing training costs while maintaining competitive accuracy. Overall, this work introduces a scalable demonstration generator model presenting the first step toward a dynamic few-shot learning paradigm in resource-constrained settings. We release the code used for the project.
title GRAD: Generative Retrieval-Aligned Demonstration Sampler for Efficient Few-Shot Reasoning
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01165