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WildFeedback: Aligning LLMs With In-situ User Interactions And Feedback (2408.15549v1)

Published 28 Aug 2024 in cs.CL
WildFeedback: Aligning LLMs With In-situ User Interactions And Feedback

Abstract: As LLMs continue to advance, aligning these models with human preferences has emerged as a critical challenge. Traditional alignment methods, relying on human or LLM annotated datasets, are limited by their resource-intensive nature, inherent subjectivity, and the risk of feedback loops that amplify model biases. To overcome these limitations, we introduce WildFeedback, a novel framework that leverages real-time, in-situ user interactions to create preference datasets that more accurately reflect authentic human values. WildFeedback operates through a three-step process: feedback signal identification, preference data construction, and user-guided evaluation. We applied this framework to a large corpus of user-LLM conversations, resulting in a rich preference dataset that reflects genuine user preferences. This dataset captures the nuances of user preferences by identifying and classifying feedback signals within natural conversations, thereby enabling the construction of more representative and context-sensitive alignment data. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that LLMs fine-tuned on WildFeedback exhibit significantly improved alignment with user preferences, as evidenced by both traditional benchmarks and our proposed user-guided evaluation. By incorporating real-time feedback from actual users, WildFeedback addresses the scalability, subjectivity, and bias challenges that plague existing approaches, marking a significant step toward developing LLMs that are more responsive to the diverse and evolving needs of their users. In summary, WildFeedback offers a robust, scalable solution for aligning LLMs with true human values, setting a new standard for the development and evaluation of user-centric LLMs.

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WildFeedback: Aligning LLMs With In-situ User Interactions And Feedback

The paper "WildFeedback: Aligning LLMs With In-situ User Interactions And Feedback" introduces a nuanced framework to address one of the critical challenges in the field of machine learning: aligning LLMs with human preferences. Traditional alignment methods, which rely on human or LLM-annotated datasets, face significant limitations. These include the resource-intensive nature of human annotations, inherent subjectivity, and the risk of feedback loops that accentuate existing biases in the models. The authors propose WildFeedback as a solution to these challenges by leveraging real-time, in-situ user interactions to create preference datasets that more accurately reflect authentic human values.

Overview of WildFeedback

WildFeedback is a three-step framework involving feedback signal identification, preference data construction, and user-guided evaluation. The framework was applied to a large corpus of user-LLM conversations, resulting in a rich dataset that captures genuine user preferences. This approach allows the construction of more representative and context-sensitive alignment data, addressing the scalability, subjectivity, and bias issues present in existing alignment methods.

Methodology

Feedback Signal Identification

The first step involves identifying user satisfaction and dissatisfaction (SAT/DSAT) signals within natural conversations. The authors adapted existing user satisfaction estimation techniques to classify these signals in the WildChat dataset, which includes over 148,000 multi-turn conversations between users and ChatGPT. By analyzing these conversations, the framework identifies the parts of the dialogue that contain feedback signals, using criteria such as gratitude, learning, compliance for SAT, and negative feedback, revision, factual error for DSAT.

Preference Data Construction

Upon identifying conversations with feedback signals, the next step is constructing a preference dataset. This includes summarizing user preferences and categorizing responses as either preferred or dispreferred based on user feedback. The authors used both expert (GPT-4) and on-policy (Mistral, Phi 3, and LLaMA 3) models to generate these responses. They ensured that the generated preferred responses aligned with expressed user preferences by integrating summarized user preferences as system instructions.

User-Guided Evaluation

To evaluate model performance, the paper introduces a user-guided evaluation methodology. This involves using actual user feedback as checklists to guide LLM evaluations. By comparing responses with and without these checklists, the evaluation framework aims to provide a more accurate benchmark for assessing how well LLMs align with human values.

Results

The experiments conducted in the paper demonstrate that models fine-tuned on WildFeedback not only show significant improvements in aligning with user preferences but also perform well on traditional benchmarks. For instance, models trained on the GPT-4 version of WildFeedback showed higher win rates across AlpacaEval 2, Arena-Hard, and MT-Bench compared to off-the-shelf instruction models. The results suggest that incorporating real-time feedback from actual users can significantly enhance the alignment of LLMs with the diverse and evolving needs of their users.

Implications and Future Directions

WildFeedback represents a robust and scalable solution for aligning LLMs with true human values, setting a new standard for the development and evaluation of user-centric LLMs. The implications of this work are both practical and theoretical. Practically, it can be applied to enhance the responsiveness and user satisfaction of conversational AI systems. Theoretically, it offers a novel approach to overcoming the biases and limitations inherent in traditional alignment methods.

Given the promising results, future research could focus on refining the feedback signal identification process to capture an even broader range of user preferences. Additionally, exploring methods to filter out spurious or harmful user preferences will be crucial to ensuring that the models learn to prioritize genuine, beneficial human values. Addressing selection bias by incorporating feedback from a more diverse set of users can also further enhance the representativeness of the preference dataset.

Conclusion

WildFeedback offers a comprehensive framework for aligning LLMs with real-time user interactions, addressing key challenges in scalability, subjectivity, and bias. The approach sets a precedent for future developments in creating more user-centric AI systems, ultimately contributing to the advancement of natural language processing and machine learning fields.

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Authors (11)
  1. Taiwei Shi (12 papers)
  2. Zhuoer Wang (9 papers)
  3. Longqi Yang (28 papers)
  4. Ying-Chun Lin (5 papers)
  5. Zexue He (23 papers)
  6. Mengting Wan (24 papers)
  7. Pei Zhou (30 papers)
  8. Sujay Jauhar (2 papers)
  9. Xiaofeng Xu (99 papers)
  10. Xia Song (38 papers)
  11. Jennifer Neville (57 papers)
Citations (1)
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