Bayesian Low-rank Adaptation for Large Language Models

Part of International Conference on Representation Learning 2024 (ICLR 2024) Conference

Bibtex Paper Supplementary

Authors

Adam Yang, Maxime Robeyns, Xi Wang, Laurence Aitchison

Abstract

Parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) has emerged as a new paradigm for cost-efficient fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs), with low-rank adaptation (LoRA) being a widely adopted choice. However, fine-tuned LLMs often become overconfident especially when fine-tuned on small datasets. Bayesian methods, with their inherent ability to estimate uncertainty, serve as potent tools to mitigate overconfidence and enhance calibration. In this work, we introduce Laplace-LoRA, a straightforward yet effective Bayesian method, which applies the Laplace approximation to the LoRA parameters and, considerably boosts the calibration of fine-tuned LLMs.