Semantic are Beacons: A Semantic Perspective for Unveiling Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning in Knowledge Learning

Renzhi Wang, Piji Li


Abstract
Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) methods enable efficient adaptation of Large Language Models (LLMs) to various downstream applications. However, the effectiveness of the PEFT diminishes notably when downstream tasks require accurate learning of specific knowledge. In this paper, we adopt a semantic perspective to investigate this phenomenon, uncovering the reasons behind PEFT’s limitations in knowledge learning task. Our findings reveals that: (1) PEFT presents a notable risk of pushing the model away from the intended knowledge target; (2) multiple knowledge interfere with each other, and such interference suppresses the learning and expression of knowledge features. Based on these insights, we introduce a data filtering strategy to exclude data that is detrimental to knowledge learning and a re-weighted learning strategy to make the model attentive to semantic distance during knowledge learning. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method on open-source large language model, further validate the semantic challenge in PEFT, thus paving the way for future research.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-acl.567
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2024
Month:
August
Year:
2024
Address:
Bangkok, Thailand
Editors:
Lun-Wei Ku, Andre Martins, Vivek Srikumar
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
9523–9537
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.567
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2024.findings-acl.567
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Renzhi Wang and Piji Li. 2024. Semantic are Beacons: A Semantic Perspective for Unveiling Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning in Knowledge Learning. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2024, pages 9523–9537, Bangkok, Thailand. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Semantic are Beacons: A Semantic Perspective for Unveiling Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning in Knowledge Learning (Wang & Li, Findings 2024)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.567.pdf