arXiv Machine Learning

Recipes for Steering and Scaling LLMs via Sampling

The paper introduces a flexible, theoretically grounded framework for steering and scaling autoregressive large language models (LLMs) through sampling. It presents two algorithms—Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) and Replica Exchange (RE)—that guide generation toward desired distributions such as powering, product, or tilting of the base model. Experiments show these methods outperform Best‑of‑N and standard MCMC baselines, offering a systematic recipe for probabilistic inference with LLMs via sampling.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

The Illusion of Stochasticity in LLMs

arXiv:2604. 06543v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In this work, we demonstrate that reliable stochastic sampling is a fundamental yet unfulfilled requirement for Large Language Models (LLMs) operating as agents.

By Xiangming Gu, Soham De, Michalis Titsias, Larisa Markeeva, Petar Veli\v{c}kovi\'c, Razvan Pascanu
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 18

Structured Inference with Large Language Gibbs

arXiv:2606. 19264v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The knowledge encoded in large language models (LLMs) can serve as a substrate for structured reasoning over variables describing a complex world, but accessing this knowledge in a probabilistically coherent manner poses a difficult inference problem.

By Sanghyeok Choi, Henry Gouk, Esmeralda S. Whitammer
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Efficiently Estimating Optimal Hyperparameter Scaling Laws through Power-Law Entropy Search

The paper introduces Power‑Law Entropy Search (PLES), a computational‑cost‑aware acquisition function that uses multi‑fidelity Bayesian optimization to efficiently estimate optimal hyperparameter scaling laws for large language model training. PLES focuses on reducing the overall uncertainty of scaling law estimates rather than optimizing a single objective, selecting configurations that maximize uncertainty reduction per unit computational cost. Experiments on synthetic benchmarks, surrogate models, and real LLM pre‑training runs show that PLES converges to accurate scaling laws using less than one‑tenth of the computational budget required by conventional grid search and other baselines.

By Zhiliang Chen, Sebastian Ament, David Eriksson, Maximilian Balandat, Eytan Bakshy, Jihao Andreas Lin
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 11

On the Effect of Sampling Diversity in Scaling LLM Inference

arXiv:2502. 11027v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large language model (LLM) scaling inference is key to unlocking greater performance, and leveraging diversity has proven an effective way to enhance it.

By Tianchun Wang, Zichuan Liu, Yuanzhou Chen, Jonathan Light, Weiyang Liu, Haifeng Chen, Xiang Zhang, Wei Cheng
arXiv AI
Aug 28

Mutual Debiasing via Dual-Seed Comparison for Probabilistic Sampling in Large Language Models

The paper introduces Dual-Seed Comparison (DSC), a protocol that uses two independent LLM-generated seeds to reduce systematic bias in probabilistic sampling. DSC constructs a bit sequence from the character-level ordinal values of the seeds, normalizes it into a pseudo-uniform variate, and maps it to the target distribution via the inverse cumulative distribution function. Empirical results show DSC outperforms existing methods in 96% of evaluated settings and enhances distributional control in tasks like MCQ generation and attribute-constrained text-to-image prompting.

By Zihao Guo, Hongtao Lv, Chaoli Zhang, Laiguo Yin, Lei Liu, Yonghui Xu, Lizhen Cui