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arxiv: 2303.15647 · v2 · pith:6K5T6HIQ · submitted 2023-03-28 · cs.CL

Scaling Down to Scale Up: A Guide to Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning

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classification cs.CL
keywords methodsfine-tuningmodelscomparisonefficiencylanguageonlyparameter-efficient
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This paper presents a systematic overview of parameter-efficient fine-tuning methods, covering over 50 papers published between early 2019 and mid-2024. These methods aim to address the challenges of fine-tuning large language models by training only a small subset of parameters. We provide a taxonomy that covers a broad range of methods and present a detailed method comparison with a specific focus on real-life efficiency in fine-tuning multibillion-scale language models. We also conduct an extensive head-to-head experimental comparison of 15 diverse PEFT methods, evaluating their performance and efficiency on models up to 11B parameters. Our findings reveal that methods previously shown to surpass a strong LoRA baseline face difficulties in resource-constrained settings, where hyperparameter optimization is limited and the network is fine-tuned only for a few epochs. Finally, we provide a set of practical recommendations for using PEFT methods and outline potential future research directions.

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