CLJun 11, 2025Code
Improved Supervised Fine-Tuning for Large Language Models to Mitigate Catastrophic ForgettingFei Ding, Baiqiao Wang
Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) is a critical step for enhancing the instruction-following capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) and adapting them to specialized domains. However, SFT often leads to a degradation of the model's general abilities, a phenomenon known as catastrophic forgetting. This problem is exacerbated when third-party practitioners fine-tune open-source models, as the original SFT data is typically not available. To address this challenge, we propose a novel and cost-effective SFT method that effectively mitigates catastrophic forgetting without requiring access to the original SFT data. Our approach first reconstructs the likely instruction distribution of the base model. It then employs a multi-model generation and filtering pipeline to synthesize a high-quality general-purpose dataset. This synthetic dataset is mixed with new, domain-specific data for fine-tuning. Experimental results show that our method not only preserves the model's capabilities in general domains but also improves task-specific performance, outperforming baselines that use publicly available SFT datasets.
LGJun 5, 2025
Multi-Layer GRPO: Enhancing Reasoning and Self-Correction in Large Language ModelsFei Ding, Baiqiao Wang, Zijian Zeng et al.
The Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) algorithm has demonstrated considerable success in enhancing the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs), as evidenced by DeepSeek-R1. However, the absence of intermediate supervision in GRPO frequently leads to inefficient exploration dynamics. A single error in a complex reasoning chain can invalidate the entire solution, resulting in abrupt reward vanishing and compromising training stability.To address these challenges, we propose MGRPO (Multi-layer GRPO). MGRPO operates in two layers: the first layer employs standard GRPO to generate an initial response. This response, along with the original query, is then fed into a second-layer GRPO process. This second layer is specifically trained to identify and correct errors in the initial response, effectively creating a self-correction loop. This mechanism provides implicit process-level supervision by rewarding successful error correction, without requiring an explicit, densely-annotated reward model. Experimental results on several mathematical reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that MGRPO significantly outperforms standard GRPO, achieving superior performance by fostering both reasoning and self-correction abilities.
ROFeb 20
SimVLA: A Simple VLA Baseline for Robotic ManipulationYuankai Luo, Woping Chen, Tong Liang et al.
Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have emerged as a promising paradigm for general-purpose robotic manipulation, leveraging large-scale pre-training to achieve strong performance. The field has rapidly evolved with additional spatial priors and diverse architectural innovations. However, these advancements are often accompanied by varying training recipes and implementation details, which can make it challenging to disentangle the precise source of empirical gains. In this work, we introduce SimVLA, a streamlined baseline designed to establish a transparent reference point for VLA research. By strictly decoupling perception from control, using a standard vision-language backbone and a lightweight action head, and standardizing critical training dynamics, we demonstrate that a minimal design can achieve state-of-the-art performance. Despite having only 0.5B parameters, SimVLA outperforms multi-billion-parameter models on standard simulation benchmarks without robot pretraining. SimVLA also reaches on-par real-robot performance compared to pi0.5. Our results establish SimVLA as a robust, reproducible baseline that enables clear attribution of empirical gains to future architectural innovations. Website: https://frontierrobo.github.io/SimVLA