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Test-Time Learning for Large Language Models

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arxiv 2505.20633 v1 pith:4ZNVFY6H submitted 2025-05-27 cs.CL cs.AIcs.LG

Test-Time Learning for Large Language Models

classification cs.CL cs.AIcs.LG
keywords llmslearningtest-timeadaptationmodeldatadomainshigh-perplexity
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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While Large Language Models (LLMs) have exhibited remarkable emergent capabilities through extensive pre-training, they still face critical limitations in generalizing to specialized domains and handling diverse linguistic variations, known as distribution shifts. In this paper, we propose a Test-Time Learning (TTL) paradigm for LLMs, namely TLM, which dynamically adapts LLMs to target domains using only unlabeled test data during testing. Specifically, we first provide empirical evidence and theoretical insights to reveal that more accurate predictions from LLMs can be achieved by minimizing the input perplexity of the unlabeled test data. Based on this insight, we formulate the Test-Time Learning process of LLMs as input perplexity minimization, enabling self-supervised enhancement of LLM performance. Furthermore, we observe that high-perplexity samples tend to be more informative for model optimization. Accordingly, we introduce a Sample Efficient Learning Strategy that actively selects and emphasizes these high-perplexity samples for test-time updates. Lastly, to mitigate catastrophic forgetting and ensure adaptation stability, we adopt Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) instead of full-parameter optimization, which allows lightweight model updates while preserving more original knowledge from the model. We introduce the AdaptEval benchmark for TTL and demonstrate through experiments that TLM improves performance by at least 20% compared to original LLMs on domain knowledge adaptation.

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Cited by 18 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

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