Evaluating the Smooth Control of Attribute Intensity in Text Generation with LLMs

Shang Zhou, Feng Yao, Chengyu Dong, Zihan Wang, Jingbo Shang


Abstract
Controlling the attribute intensity of text generation is crucial across scenarios (e.g., writing conciseness, chatting emotion, and explanation clarity). The remarkable capabilities of large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized text generation, prompting us to explore such smooth control of LLM generation. Specifically, we propose metrics to assess the range, calibration, and consistency of the generated text’s attribute intensity in response to varying control values, as well as its relevance to the intended context. To quantify the attribute intensity and context relevance, we leverage an Elo rating system and GPT4, respectively, both renowned for their robust alignment with human judgment. We look into two viable training-free methods for achieving smooth control of LLMs: (1) Prompting with semantic shifters, and (2) Modifying internal model representations. The evaluations of these two methods are conducted on 5 different attributes with various models.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-acl.258
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024
Month:
August
Year:
2024
Address:
Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting
Editors:
Lun-Wei Ku, Andre Martins, Vivek Srikumar
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
4348–4362
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.258
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Shang Zhou, Feng Yao, Chengyu Dong, Zihan Wang, and Jingbo Shang. 2024. Evaluating the Smooth Control of Attribute Intensity in Text Generation with LLMs. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024, pages 4348–4362, Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Evaluating the Smooth Control of Attribute Intensity in Text Generation with LLMs (Zhou et al., Findings 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.258.pdf