StraGo: Harnessing Strategic Guidance for Prompt Optimization

Yurong Wu, Yan Gao, Bin Zhu, Zineng Zhou, Xiaodi Sun, Sheng Yang, Jian-Guang Lou, Zhiming Ding, Linjun Yang


Abstract
Prompt engineering is pivotal for harnessing the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) across diverse applications. While existing prompt optimization methods improve prompt effectiveness, they often lead to prompt drifting, wherein newly generated prompts canadversely impact previously successful cases while addressing failures. Furthermore, these methods tend to rely heavily on LLMs’ intrinsic capabilities for prompt optimization tasks. In this paper, we introduce STRAGO (StrategicGuided Optimization), a novel approach designed to mitigate prompt drifting by leveraging insights from both successful and failed cases to identify critical factors for achieving optimization objectives. STRAGO employs a how-to-do methodology, integrating in-context learning to formulate specific, actionable strategies that provide detailed, step-by-step guidance for prompt optimization. Extensive experiments conducted across a range of tasks, including reasoning, natural language understanding, domain-specific knowledge, and industrial applications, demonstrate STRAGO’s superior performance. It establishes a new stateof-the-art in prompt optimization, showcasing its ability to deliver stable and effective prompt improvements.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-emnlp.588
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024
Month:
November
Year:
2024
Address:
Miami, Florida, USA
Editors:
Yaser Al-Onaizan, Mohit Bansal, Yun-Nung Chen
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
10043–10061
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-emnlp.588
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Yurong Wu, Yan Gao, Bin Zhu, Zineng Zhou, Xiaodi Sun, Sheng Yang, Jian-Guang Lou, Zhiming Ding, and Linjun Yang. 2024. StraGo: Harnessing Strategic Guidance for Prompt Optimization. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024, pages 10043–10061, Miami, Florida, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
StraGo: Harnessing Strategic Guidance for Prompt Optimization (Wu et al., Findings 2024)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-emnlp.588.pdf