Jiayi Shi

Yiwei Li, Jiayi Shi, Shaoxiong Feng et al.

Instruction data is crucial for improving the capability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to align with human-level performance. Recent research LIMA demonstrates that alignment is essentially a process where the model adapts instructions' interaction style or format to solve various tasks, leveraging pre-trained knowledge and skills. Therefore, for instructional data, the most important aspect is the task it represents, rather than the specific semantics and knowledge information. The latent representations of instructions play roles for some instruction-related tasks like data selection and demonstrations retrieval. However, they are always derived from text embeddings, encompass overall semantic information that influences the representation of task categories. In this work, we introduce a new concept, instruction embedding, and construct Instruction Embedding Benchmark (IEB) for its training and evaluation. Then, we propose a baseline Prompt-based Instruction Embedding (PIE) method to make the representations more attention on tasks. The evaluation of PIE, alongside other embedding methods on IEB with two designed tasks, demonstrates its superior performance in accurately identifying task categories. Moreover, the application of instruction embeddings in four downstream tasks showcases its effectiveness and suitability for instruction-related tasks.

Jiayi Shi, Yiwei Li, Shaoxiong Feng et al.

Large language models (LLMs) typically undergo instruction tuning to enhance alignment. Recent studies emphasize that quality and diversity of instruction data are more crucial than quantity, highlighting the need to select diverse, high-quality subsets to reduce training costs. However, how to evolve these selected subsets alongside the development of new instruction data remains insufficiently explored. To achieve LLMs' ongoing alignment, we introduce Instruction Bank (\textbf{InsBank}), a continuously updated repository that integrates the latest valuable instruction data. We further propose Progressive Instruction Bank Evolution (\textbf{PIBE}), a novel framework designed to evolve InsBank effectively and efficiently over time. PIBE employs a gradual data selection strategy to maintain long-term efficiency, leveraging a representation-based diversity score to capture relationships between data points and retain historical information for comprehensive diversity evaluation. This also allows for flexible combination of diversity and quality scores during data selection and ranking. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PIBE significantly outperforms baselines in InsBank evolution and is able to extract budget-specific subsets, demonstrating its effectiveness and adaptability.