Towards Tracing Trustworthiness Dynamics: Revisiting Pre-training Period of Large Language Models

Chen Qian, Jie Zhang, Wei Yao, Dongrui Liu, Zhenfei Yin, Yu Qiao, Yong Liu, Jing Shao


Abstract
Ensuring the trustworthiness of large language models (LLMs) is crucial. Most studies concentrate on fully pre-trained LLMs to better understand and improve LLMs’ trustworthiness. In this paper, to reveal the untapped potential of pre-training, we pioneer the exploration of LLMs’ trustworthiness during this period, focusing on five key dimensions: reliability, privacy, toxicity, fairness, and robustness. To begin with, we apply linear probing to LLMs. The high probing accuracy suggests that LLMs in early pre-training can already distinguish concepts in each trustworthiness dimension. Therefore, to further uncover the hidden possibilities of pre-training, we extract steering vectors from a LLM’s pre-training checkpoints to enhance the LLM’s trustworthiness. Finally, inspired by the theoretical result that mutual information estimation is bounded by linear probing accuracy, we also probe LLMs with mutual information to investigate the dynamics of trustworthiness during pre-training. We are the first to observe a similar two-phase phenomenon: fitting and compression. This research provides an initial exploration of trustworthiness modeling during LLM pre-training, seeking to unveil new insights and spur further developments in the field.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-acl.290
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
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Pages:
4864–4888
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URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.290
DOI:
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Cite (ACL):
Chen Qian, Jie Zhang, Wei Yao, Dongrui Liu, Zhenfei Yin, Yu Qiao, Yong Liu, and Jing Shao. 2024. Towards Tracing Trustworthiness Dynamics: Revisiting Pre-training Period of Large Language Models. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024, pages 4864–4888, Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Towards Tracing Trustworthiness Dynamics: Revisiting Pre-training Period of Large Language Models (Qian et al., Findings 2024)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.290.pdf