Less for More: Enhancing Preference Learning in Generative Language Models with Automated Self-Curation of Training Corpora

Ambiguity in language presents challenges in developing more enhanced language models, particularly in preference learning, where variability among annotators results in inconsistently annotated datasets used for model alignment. To address this issue, we introduce a self-curation method that preprocesses annotated datasets by leveraging proxy models trained directly on these datasets. Our method enhances preference learning by automatically detecting and removing ambiguous annotations within the dataset. The proposed approach is validated through extensive experiments, demonstrating a marked improvement in performance across various instruction-following tasks. Our work provides a straightforward and reliable method to overcome annotation inconsistencies, serving as an initial step towards the development of more advanced preference learning techniques.

Improving Instruction Following in Language Models through Proxy-Based Uncertainty Estimation

Assessing response quality to instructions in language models is vital but challenging due to the complexity of human language across different contexts. This complexity often results in ambiguous or inconsistent interpretations, making accurate assessment difficult. To address this issue, we propose a novel Uncertainty-aware Reward Model (URM) that introduces a robust uncertainty estimation for the quality of paired responses based on Bayesian approximation. Trained with preference datasets, our uncertainty-enabled proxy not only scores rewards for responses but also evaluates their inherent uncertainty. Empirical results demonstrate significant benefits of incorporating the proposed proxy into language model training. Our method boosts the instruction following capability of language models by refining data curation for training and improving policy optimization objectives, thereby surpassing existing methods by a large margin on benchmarks such as Vicuna and MT-bench. These findings highlight that our proposed approach substantially advances language model training and paves a new way of harnessing uncertainty within language models.