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arXiv Machine Learning

Train What You Deploy: Closing the MLP Reachability Gap in Low-Rank Clone Distillation

The paper introduces a new approach to low‑rank clone distillation that ensures the student model’s training targets exactly the weights it will use at inference. By redefining the training objective to cover the full deployed matrix—without changing the model’s shape, parameter count, or FLOPs—the authors recover previously unreachable linear degrees of freedom. This results in significant performance gains across multiple teacher models, achieving comparable or superior accuracy with fewer tokens and parameters.

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arXiv AI
Oct 15

Beyond GRPO and On-Policy Distillation: An Empirical Sparse-to-Dense Reward Principle for Language-Model Post-Training

The paper proposes a reward‑density principle for language‑model post‑training: sparse sequence‑level rewards are best for exploring and discovering new behaviors in a strong teacher, while dense token‑level teacher supervision is optimal for compressing that behavior into a smaller deployment model. The authors validate this rule with a four‑stage workflow—teacher RL, forward‑KL warmup, on‑policy distillation, and optional post‑bridge student RL—showing that an RL‑improved 8B teacher distilled through a dense bridge outperforms direct GRPO on a 1.7B student across math and code benchmarks. Ablation studies confirm each stage’s contribution, and the approach generalizes to Llama and Qwen models, offering a practical guideline for allocating scarce labeled data.

By Yuanda Xu, Hejian Sang, Zhengze Zhou, Ran He, Zhipeng Wang, Alborz Geramifard
llmsreinforcement-learningefficiencybenchmarks
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arXiv AI
Sep 25

Wiring Beats Blending: Structure-Aware Compensation for Transformer Downscaling

The paper investigates converting a large pretrained transformer (1.4 B parameters) into a smaller sibling (410 M) by studying representation alignment and parameter projection. It finds that dense weight projection destroys structure, and that a low‑budget, structure‑aware compensation—separating least‑squares function alignment from variance‑preserving rescaling—yields significant gains on token‑efficient training, outperforming subcloning and standard distillation pipelines at matched budgets.

By Ravi Satya Durga Prasad Yenugula
llmsefficiency
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arXiv Computer Vision
Aug 24

When does fusing hand-crafted knowledge with learned representations pay? A cost-normalized benchmark of stacking, substitution, and interference

arXiv:2608.21098v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Fusing prior knowledge with data-driven learning is attractive where data is scarce, yet no controlled account says when it helps, is redundant, or har...

By Ahmad AlMughrabi, Albert Clop, Benjamin Busam, Ricardo Marques, Petia Radeva
computer-visionbenchmarks
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arXiv Computation and Language
3d ago

What Breaks and What Comes Back: Capability Damage and Recovery in Depth-Pruned Small Language Models

Depth pruning removes entire Transformer blocks to shrink and speed up language models, but the resulting damage is uneven across capabilities. In a study of four 1.2–1.7 B instruction‑tuned models, function calling and mathematical reasoning collapsed in every case, while other skills varied in order of degradation. Fine‑tuning a short ‘healing’ run can restore some abilities, with the choice of which blocks to retrain and the allocation of a limited token budget influencing recovery outcomes.

By Piyush Dhoka, Vedant Pandhare, Varun Inamdar, Aadarsh Pathre, Pavitha Nooji
llmsagentsfine-tuningefficiencysafety
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arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Anatomy of a Closed-Loop Collapse: A Causal Case Study of a Compressed VLA Policy

The paper presents a causal analysis of a compressed VLA policy that performs well in offline tests but fails in closed‑loop execution on a simulated pick‑and‑place task. An 8‑layer distillation of Octo‑Base retains most parameters and passes all offline metrics, yet collapses during deployment, with early stages degrading gradually and final transport failing entirely. The failure is traced to a negative, late‑heavy residual in the action trace, and standard remedies (continued training, offline data, command‑level compensation, clamping) do not restore performance; only a minimal‑pair intervention that mixes deployment‑distribution rollouts with teacher data restores parity with the teacher. whyItMatters":"The study demonstrates that offline validation metrics alone are insufficient to guarantee closed‑loop success for compressed policies, highlighting the need for targeted deployment‑time testing and interventions."

By Fengze Jia (The Ohio State University)
roboticsefficiency
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arXiv AI
Oct 31

Turing LLM Post-Training: Calibrated Distillation and Efficient Dynamic-MoE Execution

The paper presents a post‑training method for dynamically routed mixture‑of‑experts (MoE) models that integrates independently optimized specialists efficiently. It introduces calibrated multi‑teacher on‑policy distillation (C‑MOPD) with teacher‑wise loss normalization and clipping, combined with a post‑capacity bounded‑width dispatch, final‑route replay, and asynchronous rollout–training overlap. On the Turing‑20B‑A2B model, the approach achieves a high integration score (0.9988), retains most specialist gains, outperforms shared SFT and Qwen3‑8B on reasoning‑enabled benchmarks, and reduces consolidation time by 2.86×.

By Yue He, Jiahui Hu, Shaman Tang, Hua Zhou, Qiman Wu, Menglin Li, Yizhao Wang, Yuheng Zhang, Da Zhu, Zhou Wang, Anhua Liu, Hanlin Chen, Mingyuan Wang, Rui Xin, Yuhua Wei, Shuang Su, Siqi Liu, Kai Yang, Weichao Huang, Hang Zhang, Honggou Yang, Xianming Liu
llmsfine-tuningefficiencybenchmarks
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