Vanishing Gradients in Reinforcement Finetuning of Language Models

Pretrained language models are commonly aligned with human preferences and downstream tasks via reinforcement finetuning (RFT), which entails maximizing a (possibly learned) reward function using policy gradient algorithms. This work highlights a fundamental optimization obstacle in RFT: we prove that the expected gradient for an input vanishes when its reward standard deviation under the model is small, even if the expected reward is far from optimal. Through experiments on an RFT benchmark and controlled environments, as well as a theoretical analysis, we then demonstrate that vanishing gradients due to small reward standard deviation are prevalent and detrimental, leading to extremely slow reward maximization. Lastly, we explore ways to overcome vanishing gradients in RFT. We find the common practice of an initial supervised finetuning (SFT) phase to be the most promising candidate, which sheds light on its importance in an RFT pipeline. Moreover, we show that a relatively small number of SFT optimization steps on as few as 1% of the input samples can suffice, indicating that the initial SFT phase need not be expensive in terms of compute and data labeling efforts. Overall, our results emphasize that being mindful for inputs whose expected gradient vanishes, as measured by the reward standard deviation, is crucial for successful execution of RFT.

What Algorithms can Transformers Learn? A Study in Length Generalization

Large language models exhibit surprising emergent generalization properties, yet also struggle on many simple reasoning tasks such as arithmetic and parity. This raises the question of if and when Transformer models can learn the true algorithm for solving a task. We study the scope of Transformers' abilities in the specific setting of length generalization on algorithmic tasks. Here, we propose a unifying framework to understand when and how Transformers can exhibit strong length generalization on a given task. Specifically, we leverage RASP (Weiss et al., 2021) -- a programming language designed for the computational model of a Transformer -- and introduce the RASP-Generalization Conjecture: Transformers tend to length generalize on a task if the task can be solved by a short RASP program which works for all input lengths. This simple conjecture remarkably captures most known instances of length generalization on algorithmic tasks. Moreover, we leverage our insights to drastically improve generalization performance on traditionally hard tasks (such as parity and addition). On the theoretical side, we give a simple example where the "min-degree-interpolator" model of learning from Abbe et al. (2023) does not correctly predict Transformers' out-of-distribution behavior, but our conjecture does. Overall, our work provides a novel perspective on the mechanisms of compositional generalization and the algorithmic capabilities of Transformers.

Cinematic-L1 Video Stabilization with a Log-Homography Model

We present a method for stabilizing handheld video that simulates the camera motions cinematographers achieve with equipment like tripods, dollies, and Steadicams. We formulate a constrained convex optimization problem minimizing the $\ell_1$-norm of the first three derivatives of the stabilized motion. Our approach extends the work of Grundmann et al. [9] by solving with full homographies (rather than affinities) in order to correct perspective, preserving linearity by working in log-homography space. We also construct crop constraints that preserve field-of-view; model the problem as a quadratic (rather than linear) program to allow for an $\ell_2$ term encouraging fidelity to the original trajectory; and add constraints and objectives to reduce distortion. Furthermore, we propose new methods for handling salient objects via both inclusion constraints and centering objectives. Finally, we describe a windowing strategy to approximate the solution in linear time and bounded memory. Our method is computationally efficient, running at 300fps on an iPhone XS, and yields high-quality results, as we demonstrate with a collection of stabilized videos, quantitative and qualitative comparisons to [9] and other methods, and an ablation study.