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To improve the performance on a target task, researchers have fine-tuned language models with an intermediate task before the target task of interest. However, previous works have focused on the pre-trained language models and downstream…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-10-07 Qihong Chen , Jiawei Li , Hyunjae Suh , Lianghao Jiang , Zheng Zhou , Jingze Chen , Jiri Gesi , Iftekhar Ahmed

Recent multimodal large language models (MLLMs) perform strongly on general visual understanding, diagram and chart reasoning, and document-centric perception. However, these abilities are learned from heterogeneous supervision sources with…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Guowei Tang

In modern LLMs, linguistic features function not as stylistic artifacts but as probes of probability mass, allocated under training alignment objectives. Language models trained with contemporary pipelines exhibit severe reshaping of…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Rohan Mahapatra

Recent studies applied Parameter Efficient Fine-Tuning techniques (PEFTs) to efficiently narrow the performance gap between pre-training and downstream. There are two important factors for various PEFTs, namely, the accessible data size and…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2024-05-21 Yuxin Tian , Mouxing Yang , Yunfan Li , Dayiheng Liu , Xingzhang Ren , Xi Peng , Jiancheng Lv

Recent work has shown that fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) on code with security vulnerabilities can result in misaligned and unsafe behaviors across broad domains. These results prompted concerns about the emergence of harmful…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-08 Jeremiah Giordani

Recent advances in alignment techniques such as Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), and Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) have improved the safety of large language models (LLMs). However,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-26 Mengxuan Hu , Vivek V. Datla , Anoop Kumar , Zihan Guan , Sheng Li , Alfy Samuel , Daben Liu

Fine-tuning large language models is a popular choice among users trying to adapt them for specific applications. However, fine-tuning these models is a demanding task because the user has to examine several factors, such as resource…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Arjun Singh , Nikhil Pandey , Anup Shirgaonkar , Pavan Manoj , Vijay Aski

Instruction Fine-tuning~(IFT) is a critical phase in building large language models~(LLMs). Previous works mainly focus on the IFT's role in the transfer of behavioral norms and the learning of additional world knowledge. However, the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-08-13 Mengjie Ren , Boxi Cao , Hongyu Lin , Cao Liu , Xianpei Han , Ke Zeng , Guanglu Wan , Xunliang Cai , Le Sun

Pretrained models from self-supervision are prevalently used in fine-tuning downstream tasks faster or for better accuracy. However, gaining robustness from pretraining is left unexplored. We introduce adversarial training into…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2020-03-31 Tianlong Chen , Sijia Liu , Shiyu Chang , Yu Cheng , Lisa Amini , Zhangyang Wang

Memorization in large language models (LLMs) makes them vulnerable to data extraction attacks. While pre-training memorization has been extensively studied, fewer works have explored its impact in fine-tuning, particularly for LoRA…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-27 Fei Wang , Baochun Li

Instruction fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs) often involves selecting a subset of instruction training data from a large candidate pool, using a small query set from the target task. Despite growing interest, the literature on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Nihal V. Nayak , Paula Rodriguez-Diaz , Neha Hulkund , Sara Beery , David Alvarez-Melis

In this work, we evaluate 10 open-source instructed LLMs on four representative code comprehension and generation tasks. We have the following main findings. First, for the zero-shot setting, instructed LLMs are very competitive on code…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-08-03 Zhiqiang Yuan , Junwei Liu , Qiancheng Zi , Mingwei Liu , Xin Peng , Yiling Lou

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) improves performance but introduces critical safety vulnerabilities: even minimal harmful data can severely compromise safety measures. We observe that perturbations orthogonal to the alignment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-08 Shuo Yang , Qihui Zhang , Yuyang Liu , Xiaojun Jia , Kunpeng Ning , Jiayu Yao , Jigang Wang , Hailiang Dai , Yibing Song , Li Yuan

Large Language Models are traditionally finetuned on large instruction datasets. However recent studies suggest that small, high-quality datasets can suffice for general purpose instruction following. This lack of consensus surrounding…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-29 Aditi Jha , Sam Havens , Jeremy Dohmann , Alex Trott , Jacob Portes

Large language models (LLMs) are often fine-tuned for use on downstream tasks, though this can degrade capabilities learned during previous training. This phenomenon, often referred to as catastrophic forgetting, has important potential…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-30 Megan Ung , Alicia Sun , Samuel J. Bell , Bhaktipriya Radharapu , Levent Sagun , Adina Williams

Misaligned research objectives have considerably hindered progress in adversarial robustness research over the past decade. For instance, an extensive focus on optimizing target metrics, while neglecting rigorous standardized evaluation,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-24 Leo Schwinn , Yan Scholten , Tom Wollschläger , Sophie Xhonneux , Stephen Casper , Stephan Günnemann , Gauthier Gidel

Instruction tuning for large language models (LLMs) has gained attention from researchers due to its ability to unlock the potential of LLMs in following instructions. While instruction tuning offers advantages for facilitating the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-05-17 Hao Chen , Yiming Zhang , Qi Zhang , Hantao Yang , Xiaomeng Hu , Xuetao Ma , Yifan Yanggong , Junbo Zhao

The pretrained large language models (LLMs) are finetuned with labeled data for better instruction following ability and alignment with human values. In this paper, we study the learning dynamics of LLM finetuning on reasoning tasks and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Zhiwen Ruan , Yun Chen , Yutao Hou , Peng Li , Yang Liu , Guanhua Chen

Alignment of large language models (LLMs) typically involves training a reward model on preference data, followed by policy optimization with respect to the reward model. However, optimizing policies with respect to a single reward model…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-23 Debangshu Banerjee , Kintan Saha , Aditya Gopalan

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in security-sensitive applications, where they must follow system- or developer-specified instructions that define the intended task behavior, while completing benign user requests.…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Shawn Li , Chenxiao Yu , Zhiyu Ni , Hao Li , Charith Peris , Chaowei Xiao , Yue Zhao