Advancing Machine-Generated Text Detection from an Easy to Hard Supervision Perspective

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wu, Chenwang, Cheung, Yiu-ming, Han, Bo, Lian, Defu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wu, Chenwang
Cheung, Yiu-ming
Han, Bo
Lian, Defu
author_facet Wu, Chenwang
Cheung, Yiu-ming
Han, Bo
Lian, Defu
contents Existing machine-generated text (MGT) detection methods implicitly assume labels as the "golden standard". However, we reveal boundary ambiguity in MGT detection, implying that traditional training paradigms are inexact. Moreover, limitations of human cognition and the superintelligence of detectors make inexact learning widespread and inevitable. To this end, we propose an easy-to-hard enhancement framework to provide reliable supervision under such inexact conditions. Distinct from knowledge distillation, our framework employs an easy supervisor targeting relatively simple longer-text detection tasks (despite weaker capabilities), to enhance the more challenging target detector. Firstly, longer texts targeted by supervisors theoretically alleviate the impact of inexact labels, laying the foundation for reliable supervision. Secondly, by structurally incorporating the detector into the supervisor, we theoretically model the supervisor as a lower performance bound for the detector. Thus, optimizing the supervisor indirectly optimizes the detector, ultimately approximating the underlying "golden" labels. Extensive experiments across diverse practical scenarios, including cross-LLM, cross-domain, mixed text, and paraphrase attacks, demonstrate the framework's significant detection effectiveness. The code is available at: https://github.com/tmlr-group/Easy2Hard.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_00988
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Advancing Machine-Generated Text Detection from an Easy to Hard Supervision Perspective
Wu, Chenwang
Cheung, Yiu-ming
Han, Bo
Lian, Defu
Computation and Language
Existing machine-generated text (MGT) detection methods implicitly assume labels as the "golden standard". However, we reveal boundary ambiguity in MGT detection, implying that traditional training paradigms are inexact. Moreover, limitations of human cognition and the superintelligence of detectors make inexact learning widespread and inevitable. To this end, we propose an easy-to-hard enhancement framework to provide reliable supervision under such inexact conditions. Distinct from knowledge distillation, our framework employs an easy supervisor targeting relatively simple longer-text detection tasks (despite weaker capabilities), to enhance the more challenging target detector. Firstly, longer texts targeted by supervisors theoretically alleviate the impact of inexact labels, laying the foundation for reliable supervision. Secondly, by structurally incorporating the detector into the supervisor, we theoretically model the supervisor as a lower performance bound for the detector. Thus, optimizing the supervisor indirectly optimizes the detector, ultimately approximating the underlying "golden" labels. Extensive experiments across diverse practical scenarios, including cross-LLM, cross-domain, mixed text, and paraphrase attacks, demonstrate the framework's significant detection effectiveness. The code is available at: https://github.com/tmlr-group/Easy2Hard.
title Advancing Machine-Generated Text Detection from an Easy to Hard Supervision Perspective
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00988