Tebmer/Awesome-Knowledge-Distillation-of-LLMs

This repository collects papers for "A Survey on Knowledge Distillation of Large Language Models". We break down KD into Knowledge Elicitation and Distillation Algorithms, and explore the Skill & Vertical Distillation of LLMs.

1,314

56 commits

updated Mar 9, 2025

See the code

README

Awesome Knowledge Distillation of LLM Papers

Awesome PDF

A Survey on Knowledge Distillation of Large Language Models

Xiaohan Xu1   Ming Li2   Chongyang Tao3   Tao Shen4   Reynold Cheng1   Jinyang Li1   Can Xu5   Dacheng Tao6   Tianyi Zhou2  

1 The University of Hong Kong    2 University of Maryland    3 Microsoft    4 University of Technology Sydney    5 Peking University    6 The University of Sydney



A collection of papers related to knowledge distillation of large language models (LLMs). If you want to use LLMs for benefitting your own smaller models training, or use self-generated knowledge to achieve the self-improvement, just take a look at this collection.

We will update this collection every week. Welcome to star ⭐️ this repo to keep track of the updates.

❗️Legal Consideration: It's crucial to note the legal implications of utilizing LLM outputs, such as those from ChatGPT (Restrictions), Llama (License), etc. We strongly advise users to adhere to the terms of use specified by the model providers, such as the restrictions on developing competitive products, and so on.

💡 News

Contributing to This Collection

Feel free to open an issue/PR or e-mail shawnxxh@gmail.com, minglii@umd.edu, hishentao@gmail.com and chongyangtao@gmail.com if you find any missing taxonomies or papers. We will keep updating this collection and survey.

📝 Introduction

KD of LLMs: This survey delves into knowledge distillation (KD) techniques in Large Language Models (LLMs), highlighting KD's crucial role in transferring advanced capabilities from proprietary LLMs like GPT-4 to open-source counterparts such as LLaMA and Mistral. We also explore how KD enables the compression and self-improvement of open-source LLMs by using them as teachers.

KD and Data Augmentation: Crucially, the survey navigates the intricate interplay between data augmentation (DA) and KD, illustrating how DA emerges as a powerful paradigm within the KD framework to bolster LLMs' performance. By leveraging DA to generate context-rich, skill-specific training data, KD transcends traditional boundaries, enabling open-source models to approximate the contextual adeptness, ethical alignment, and deep semantic insights characteristic of their proprietary counterparts.

Taxonomy: Our analysis is meticulously structured around three foundational pillars: algorithm, skill, and verticalization -- providing a comprehensive examination of KD mechanisms, the enhancement of specific cognitive abilities, and their practical implications across diverse fields.

KD Algorithms: For KD algorithms, we categorize it into two principal steps: "Knowledge Elicitation" focusing on eliciting knowledge from teacher LLMs, and "Distillation Algorithms" centered on injecting this knowledge into student models.


Figure: An illustration of different knowledge elicitation methods from teacher LLMs.

Skill Distillation: We delve into the enhancement of specific cognitive abilities, such as context following, alignment, agent, NLP task specialization, and multi-modality.

Verticalization Distillation: We explore the practical implications of KD across diverse fields, including law, medical & healthcare, finance, science, and miscellaneous domains.

Note that both Skill Distillation and Verticalization Distillation employ Knowledge Elicitation and Distillation Algorithms in KD Algorithms to achieve their KD. Thus, there are overlaps between them. However, this could also provide different perspectives for the papers.

Why KD of LLMs?

In the era of LLMs, KD of LLMs plays the following crucial roles:



RoleDescriptionTrend
① Advancing SLMsTransferring advanced capabilities from proprietary LLMs to smaller SLMs, such as open source LLMs or other smaller models.Most common
② CompressionCompressing LLMs to make them more efficient and practical.More popular with the prosperity of open-source LLMs
③ Self-ImprovementRefining open-source LLMs' performance by leveraging their own knowledge, i.e. self-knowledge.New trend to make open-source LLMs more competitive

📒 Table of Contents

KD Algorithms

Knowledge Elicitation

Labeling

TitleVenueDateCodeData
Evidence-Focused Fact Summarization for Knowledge-Augmented Zero-Shot Question AnsweringarXiv2024-03
Aligning Large and Small Language Models via Chain-of-Thought ReasoningEACL2024-03Github
Divide-or-Conquer? Which Part Should You Distill Your LLM?arXiv2024-02
Miko: Multimodal Intention Knowledge Distillation from Large Language Models for Social-Media Commonsense DiscoveryarXiv2024-02
KnowTuning: Knowledge-aware Fine-tuning for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02Github
TinyLLM: Learning a Small Student from Multiple Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Mixed Distillation Helps Smaller Language Model Better ReasoningarXiv2023-12
Tailoring Self-Rationalizers with Multi-Reward DistillationarXiv2023-11GithubData
Orca 2: Teaching Small Language Models How to ReasonarXiv2023-11
Mammoth: Building Math Generalist Models through Hybrid Instruction TuningarXiv2023-09GithubData
PandaLM: An Automatic Evaluation Benchmark for LLM Instruction Tuning OptimizationarXiv2023-06GithubData
Symbolic Chain-of-Thought Distillation: Small Models Can Also "Think" Step-by-StepACL2023-06
Orca: Progressive Learning from Complex Explanation Traces of GPT-4arXiv2023-06
Distilling Step-by-Step! Outperforming Larger Language Models with Less Training Data and Smaller Model SizesACL2023-05GithubData
Impossible Distillation: from Low-Quality Model to High-Quality Dataset & Model for Summarization and ParaphrasingarXiv2023-05Github
Baize: An Open-Source Chat Model with Parameter-Efficient Tuning on Self-Chat DataEMNLP2023-04GithubData
ChatGPT outperforms crowd workers for text-annotation tasksarXiv2023-03
Annollm: Making large language models to be better crowdsourced annotatorsarXiv2023-03
GPT-4All: Training an Assistant-Style Chatbot with Large Scale Data Distillation from GPT-3.5-Turbo-2023-03Github
Specializing Smaller Language Models towards Multi-Step ReasoningarXiv2023-01
Is GPT-3 a Good Data Annotator?ACL2022-12Github
Large Language Models Are Reasoning TeachersACL2022-12GithubData
Teaching Small Language Models to ReasonACL2022-12
Explanations from Large Language Models Make Small Reasoners BetterarXiv2022-10
Want To Reduce Labeling Cost? GPT-3 Can HelpFindings of EMNLP2021-08

Expansion

TitleVenueDateCodeData
Instruction Fusion: Advancing Prompt Evolution through HybridizationarXiv2023-12
An Empirical Study of Instruction-tuning Large Language Models in ChineseEMNLP2023-10GithubData
PromptMix: A Class Boundary Augmentation Method for Large Language Model DistillationEMNLP2023-10Github
Wizardmath: Empowering mathematical reasoning for large language models via reinforced evol-instructarXiv2023-08Github
Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for CodearXiv2023-08Github
WizardCoder: Empowering Code Large Language Models with Evol-InstructICLR2023-06Github
Principle-Driven Self-Alignment of Language Models from Scratch with Minimal Human SupervisionNeurIPS2023-05GithubData
Targeted Data Generation: Finding and Fixing Model WeaknessesACL2023-05Github
Wizardlm: Empowering large language models to follow complex instructionsICLR2023-04GithubData
Data
LaMini-LM: A Diverse Herd of Distilled Models from Large-Scale InstructionsarXiv2023-04GithubData
Alpaca: Aligning Language Model with Human Preferences-2023-03GithubData
Code Alpaca: An Instruction-following LLaMA model for code generation-2023-03GithubData
Exploring the Impact of Instruction Data Scaling on Large Language Models: An Empirical Study on Real-World Use CasesarXiv2023-03GithubData
AugGPT: Leveraging ChatGPT for Text Data AugmentationarXiv2023-02Github
Self-instruct: Aligning language model with self generated instructionsACL2022-12GithubData
Symbolic Knowledge Distillation: from General Language Models to Commonsense ModelsNAACL2021-10GithubData

Curation

Feature

TitleVenueDateCodeData
PromptKD: Distilling Student-Friendly Knowledge for Generative Language Models via Prompt TuningEMNLP Findings2024-02GithubData
Rethinking Kullback-Leibler Divergence in Knowledge Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-04
Direct Alignment of Draft Model for Speculative Decoding with Chat-Fine-Tuned LLMsarXiv2024-03
DB-LLM: Accurate Dual-Binarization for Efficient LLMsarXiv2024-02
BitDistiller: Unleashing the Potential of Sub-4-Bit LLMs via Self-DistillationarXiv2024-02Github
DISTILLM: Towards Streamlined Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02Github
Towards Cross-Tokenizer Distillation: the Universal Logit Distillation Loss for LLMsarXiv2024-02GithubData
Revisiting Knowledge Distillation for Autoregressive Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Knowledge Fusion of Large Language ModelsICLR2024-01Github
Improving In-context Learning via Bidirectional AlignmentarXiv2023-12
Towards the Fundamental Limits of Knowledge Transfer over Finite DomainsNeurIPS2023-10
Baby Llama: Knowledge Distillation from an Ensemble of Teachers Trained on a Small Dataset with No Performance PenaltyCoNLL2023-08GithubData
f-Divergence Minimization for Sequence-Level Knowledge DistillationACL2023-07GithubData
MiniLLM: Knowledge Distillation of Large Language ModelsICLR2023-06GithubData
On-Policy Distillation of Language Models: Learning from Self-Generated MistakesICLR2023-06
LLM-QAT: Data-Free Quantization Aware Training for Large Language ModelsarXiv2023-05GithubData
Less is more: Task-aware layer-wise distillation for language model compressionPMLR2022-10Github

Feedback

TitleVenueDateCodeData
PromptKD: Distilling Student-Friendly Knowledge for Generative Language Models via Prompt TuningEMNLP Findings2024-02GithubData
Evidence-Focused Fact Summarization for Knowledge-Augmented Zero-Shot Question AnsweringarXiv2024-03
Evolving Knowledge Distillation with Large Language Models and Active LearningarXiv2024-03
Direct Language Model Alignment from Online AI FeedbackarXiv2024-02
DISTILLM: Towards Streamlined Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02Github
Improving Large Language Models via Fine-grained Reinforcement Learning with Minimum Editing ConstraintarXiv2024-01Github
Beyond Imitation: Leveraging Fine-grained Quality Signals for AlignmentarXiv2023-11
Can Language Models Teach Weaker Agents? Teacher Explanations Improve Students via PersonalizationICLR2023-10Github
Motif: Intrinsic Motivation from Artificial Intelligence FeedbackICLR2023-10Github
Ultrafeedback: Boosting language models with high-quality feedbackarXiv2023-10GithubData
Personalised Distillation: Empowering Open-Sourced LLMs with Adaptive Learning for Code GenerationEMNLP2023-10Github
CycleAlign: Iterative Distillation from Black-box LLM to White-box Models for Better Human AlignmentarXiv2023-10
Rlaif: Scaling Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback with AI FeedbackarXiv2023-09
Wizardmath: Empowering mathematical reasoning for large language models via reinforced evol-instructarXiv2023-08Github
On-Policy Distillation of Language Models: Learning from Self-Generated MistakesICLR2023-06
MiniLLM: Knowledge Distillation of Large Language ModelsICLR2023-06GithubData
Language to Rewards for Robotic Skill SynthesisarXiv2023-06Github
Lion: Adversarial Distillation of Closed-Source Large Language ModelEMNLP2023-05Github
SelFee: Iterative Self-Revising LLM Empowered by Self-Feedback GenerationarXiv2023-05
LaMini-LM: A Diverse Herd of Distilled Models from Large-Scale InstructionsarXiv2023-04GithubData
Reward Design with Language ModelsICLR2023-03Github
Consitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI FeedbackarXiv2022-12

Self-Knowledge

TitleVenueDateCodeData
V-STaR: Training Verifiers for Self-Taught ReasonersarXiv2024-02
Self-Rewarding Language ModelsarXiv2024-01Github
Self-Play Fine-Tuning Converts Weak Language Models to Strong Language ModelsarXiv2024-01GithubData
Kun: Answer Polishment for Chinese Self-Alignment with Instruction Back-TranslationarXiv2024-01GithubData
APT: Adaptive Pruning and Tuning Pretrained Language Models for Efficient Training and InferencearXiv2024-01
GRATH: Gradual Self-Truthifying for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-01
Beyond human data: Scaling self-training for problem-solving with language modelsarXiv2023-12
Self-Knowledge Guided Retrieval Augmentation for Large Language ModelsEMNLP Findings2023-10Github
RAIN: Your Language Models Can Align Themselves without FinetuningarXiv2023-09Github
Reinforced Self-Training (ReST) for Language ModelingarXiv2023-08
Humback: Self-Alignment with Instruction BacktranslationICLR2023-08Github
Self-Alignment of Large Language Models via Reinforcement Learning from Contrast DistillationICLR2023-07Github
Self-Improvement of Large Language Models via Reinforcement Learning from Human FeedbackEMNLP2023-06
Principle-Driven Self-Alignment of Language Models from Scratch with Minimal Human SupervisionNeurIPS2023-05GithubData
Impossible Distillation: from Low-Quality Model to High-Quality Dataset & Model for Summarization and ParaphrasingarXiv2023-05Github
Language Model Self-improvement by Reinforcement Learning ContemplationarXiv2023-05
Baize: An Open-Source Chat Model with Parameter-Efficient Tuning on Self-Chat DataEMNLP2023-04GithubData
Self-instruct: Aligning language model with self generated instructionsACL2022-12GithubData
Large Language Models Can Self-ImproveEMNLP2022-10
STaR: Bootstrapping Reasoning With ReasoningNeurIPS2022-03Github

Distillation Algorithms

Supervised Fine-Tuning

Due to the large number of works applying supervised fine-tuning, we only list the most representative ones here.

Divergence and Similarity

TitleVenueDateCodeData
PromptKD: Distilling Student-Friendly Knowledge for Generative Language Models via Prompt TuningEMNLP Findings2024-02GithubData
Rethinking Kullback-Leibler Divergence in Knowledge Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-04
Weight-Inherited Distillation for Task-Agnostic BERT CompressionNAACL2024-03Github
BitDistiller: Unleashing the Potential of Sub-4-Bit LLMs via Self-DistillationarXiv2024-02Github
DISTILLM: Towards Streamlined Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02Github
Towards Cross-Tokenizer Distillation: the Universal Logit Distillation Loss for LLMsarXiv2024-02GithubData
Revisiting Knowledge Distillation for Autoregressive Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Knowledge Distillation for Closed-Source Language ModelsarXiv2024-01
Knowledge Fusion of Large Language ModelsICLR2024-01Github
Improving In-context Learning via Bidirectional AlignmentarXiv2023-12
Towards the Fundamental Limits of Knowledge Transfer over Finite DomainsNeurIPS2023-10
Baby Llama: Knowledge Distillation from an Ensemble of Teachers Trained on a Small Dataset with No Performance PenaltyCoNLL2023-08GithubData
f-Divergence Minimization for Sequence-Level Knowledge DistillationACL2023-07GithubData
f-Divergence Minimization for Sequence-Level Knowledge DistillationACL2023-07GithubData
MiniLLM: Knowledge Distillation of Large Language ModelsICLR2023-06GithubData
On-Policy Distillation of Language Models: Learning from Self-Generated MistakesICLR2023-06
LLM-QAT: Data-Free Quantization Aware Training for Large Language ModelsarXiv2023-05GithubData
Less is more: Task-aware layer-wise distillation for language model compressionPMLR2022-10Github
DistilBERT, a distilled version of BERT: smaller, faster, cheaper and lighterNeurIPS2019-10

Reinforcement Learning

Rank Optimization

Skill Distillation

Context Following

Instruction Following

TitleVenueDateCodeData
Synthetic Data (Almost) from Scratch: Generalized Instruction Tuning for Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Revisiting Knowledge Distillation for Autoregressive Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Selective Reflection-Tuning: Student-Selected Data Recycling for LLM Instruction-TuningarXiv2024-02GithubData
Phi-2: The surprising power of small language models-2023-12
What Makes Good Data for Alignment? A Comprehensive Study of Automatic Data Selection in Instruction TuningICLR2023-12GithubData
MUFFIN: Curating Multi-Faceted Instructions for Improving Instruction-FollowingarXiv2023-12GithubData
Instruction Fusion: Advancing Prompt Evolution through HybridizationarXiv2023-12
Orca 2: Teaching Small Language Models How to ReasonarXiv2023-11
Reflection-Tuning: Data Recycling Improves LLM Instruction-TuningNIPS Workshop2023-10GithubData
Textbooks Are All You Need II: Phi-1.5 Technical ReportarXiv2023-09
Orca: Progressive Learning from Complex Explanation Traces of GPT-4arXiv2023-06
Textbooks Are All You Need: A Large-Scale Instructional Text Data Set for Language ModelsarXiv2023-06
SelFee: Iterative Self-Revising LLM Empowered by Self-Feedback GenerationarXiv2023-05
ExpertPrompting: Instructing Large Language Models to be Distinguished ExpertsarXiv2023-05GithubData
LaMini-LM: A Diverse Herd of Distilled Models from Large-Scale InstructionsarXiv2023-04GithubData
Wizardlm: Empowering large language models to follow complex instructionsICLR2023-04GithubData
Data
Koala: A Dialogue Model for Academic Research-2023-04GithubData
Alpaca: Aligning Language Model with Human Preferences-2023-03GithubData
Vicuna: An Open-Source Chatbot Impressing GPT-4 with 90% ChatGPT Quality*-2023-03GithubData
Self-instruct: Aligning language model with self generated instructionsACL2022-12GithubData

Multi-turn Dialogue

RAG Capability

Alignment

Thinking Pattern

Preference

Value

Agent

Tool Using

Planning

NLP Task Specialization

NLU

NLG

Information Retrieval

Recommendation

Text Generation Evaluation

Code

Multi-Modality

Summary Table


Figure: A summary of representative works about skill distillation.

Verticalization Distillation

Law

Medical & Healthcare

Finance

Science

TitleVenueDateCodeData
MuseGraph: Graph-oriented Instruction Tuning of Large Language Models for Generic Graph MiningarXiv2024-03
SciGLM: Training Scientific Language Models with Self-Reflective Instruction Annotation and TuningarXiv2024-01Github
AstroLLaMA-Chat: Scaling AstroLLaMA with Conversational and Diverse DatasetsarXiv2024-01
GeoGalactica: A Scientific Large Language Model in GeosciencearXiv2024-01GithubData
InstructMol: Multi-Modal Integration for Building a Versatile and Reliable Molecular Assistant in Drug DiscoveryarXiv2023-11Github
LLM-Prop: Predicting Physical And Electronic Properties Of Crystalline Solids From Their Text DescriptionsarXiv2023-10Github
OceanGPT: A Large Language Model for Ocean Science TasksarXiv2023-10GithubData
MarineGPT: Unlocking Secrets of Ocean to the PublicarXiv2023-10Github
Mammoth: Building Math Generalist Models through Hybrid Instruction TuningarXiv2023-09GithubData
ToRA: A Tool-Integrated Reasoning Agent for Mathematical Problem SolvingICLR2023-09Github
DARWIN Series: Domain Specific Large Language Models for Natural SciencearXiv2023-08Github
Wizardmath: Empowering mathematical reasoning for large language models via reinforced evol-instructarXiv2023-08Github
Biomedgpt: Open Multimodal Generative Pre-trained Transformer for BiomedicinearXiv2023-08GithubData
Prot2Text: Multimodal Protein’s Function Generation with GNNs and TransformersNeurIPS2023-07
xTrimoPGLM: Unified 100B-Scale Pre-trained Transformer for Deciphering the Language of ProteinbioRxiv2023-07
GIMLET: A Unified Graph-Text Model for Instruction-Based Molecule Zero-Shot LearningNeurIPS2023-06GithubData
K2: A Foundation Language Model for Geoscience Knowledge Understanding and UtilizationarXiv2023-06Github
Visual Instruction Tuning: A Comprehensive Study of Visual Instruction Tuning for Large Language ModelsNeurIPS2023-04GithubData

Misc.

Encoder-based KD

Note: Our survey mainly focuses on generative LLMs, and thus the encoder-based KD is not included in the survey. However, we are also interested in this topic and continue to update the latest works in this area.

TODO List

  • Add works about O1-like distillation. Stay tuned!

Citation

If you find this repository helpful, please consider citing the following paper:

@misc{xu2024survey,
      title={A Survey on Knowledge Distillation of Large Language Models}, 
      author={Xiaohan Xu and Ming Li and Chongyang Tao and Tao Shen and Reynold Cheng and Jinyang Li and Can Xu and Dacheng Tao and Tianyi Zhou},
      year={2024},
      eprint={2402.13116},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL}
}

Star History

Star History Chart

alignment
compression
data-augmentation
data-synthesis
feedback
instruction-following
kd
knowledge-distillation
large-language-model
llm
multi-modal
self-distillation
self-training
supervised-finetuning
survey

Contributors

Tebmer

54 commits

alphadl

2 commits

Tebmer/Awesome-Knowledge-Distillation-of-LLMs

This repository collects papers for "A Survey on Knowledge Distillation of Large Language Models". We break down KD into Knowledge Elicitation and Distillation Algorithms, and explore the Skill & Vertical Distillation of LLMs.

1,314

56 commits

updated Mar 9, 2025

See the code

README

Awesome Knowledge Distillation of LLM Papers

Awesome PDF

A Survey on Knowledge Distillation of Large Language Models

Xiaohan Xu1   Ming Li2   Chongyang Tao3   Tao Shen4   Reynold Cheng1   Jinyang Li1   Can Xu5   Dacheng Tao6   Tianyi Zhou2  

1 The University of Hong Kong    2 University of Maryland    3 Microsoft    4 University of Technology Sydney    5 Peking University    6 The University of Sydney



A collection of papers related to knowledge distillation of large language models (LLMs). If you want to use LLMs for benefitting your own smaller models training, or use self-generated knowledge to achieve the self-improvement, just take a look at this collection.

We will update this collection every week. Welcome to star ⭐️ this repo to keep track of the updates.

❗️Legal Consideration: It's crucial to note the legal implications of utilizing LLM outputs, such as those from ChatGPT (Restrictions), Llama (License), etc. We strongly advise users to adhere to the terms of use specified by the model providers, such as the restrictions on developing competitive products, and so on.

💡 News

Contributing to This Collection

Feel free to open an issue/PR or e-mail shawnxxh@gmail.com, minglii@umd.edu, hishentao@gmail.com and chongyangtao@gmail.com if you find any missing taxonomies or papers. We will keep updating this collection and survey.

📝 Introduction

KD of LLMs: This survey delves into knowledge distillation (KD) techniques in Large Language Models (LLMs), highlighting KD's crucial role in transferring advanced capabilities from proprietary LLMs like GPT-4 to open-source counterparts such as LLaMA and Mistral. We also explore how KD enables the compression and self-improvement of open-source LLMs by using them as teachers.

KD and Data Augmentation: Crucially, the survey navigates the intricate interplay between data augmentation (DA) and KD, illustrating how DA emerges as a powerful paradigm within the KD framework to bolster LLMs' performance. By leveraging DA to generate context-rich, skill-specific training data, KD transcends traditional boundaries, enabling open-source models to approximate the contextual adeptness, ethical alignment, and deep semantic insights characteristic of their proprietary counterparts.

Taxonomy: Our analysis is meticulously structured around three foundational pillars: algorithm, skill, and verticalization -- providing a comprehensive examination of KD mechanisms, the enhancement of specific cognitive abilities, and their practical implications across diverse fields.

KD Algorithms: For KD algorithms, we categorize it into two principal steps: "Knowledge Elicitation" focusing on eliciting knowledge from teacher LLMs, and "Distillation Algorithms" centered on injecting this knowledge into student models.


Figure: An illustration of different knowledge elicitation methods from teacher LLMs.

Skill Distillation: We delve into the enhancement of specific cognitive abilities, such as context following, alignment, agent, NLP task specialization, and multi-modality.

Verticalization Distillation: We explore the practical implications of KD across diverse fields, including law, medical & healthcare, finance, science, and miscellaneous domains.

Note that both Skill Distillation and Verticalization Distillation employ Knowledge Elicitation and Distillation Algorithms in KD Algorithms to achieve their KD. Thus, there are overlaps between them. However, this could also provide different perspectives for the papers.

Why KD of LLMs?

In the era of LLMs, KD of LLMs plays the following crucial roles:



RoleDescriptionTrend
① Advancing SLMsTransferring advanced capabilities from proprietary LLMs to smaller SLMs, such as open source LLMs or other smaller models.Most common
② CompressionCompressing LLMs to make them more efficient and practical.More popular with the prosperity of open-source LLMs
③ Self-ImprovementRefining open-source LLMs' performance by leveraging their own knowledge, i.e. self-knowledge.New trend to make open-source LLMs more competitive

📒 Table of Contents

KD Algorithms

Knowledge Elicitation

Labeling

TitleVenueDateCodeData
Evidence-Focused Fact Summarization for Knowledge-Augmented Zero-Shot Question AnsweringarXiv2024-03
Aligning Large and Small Language Models via Chain-of-Thought ReasoningEACL2024-03Github
Divide-or-Conquer? Which Part Should You Distill Your LLM?arXiv2024-02
Miko: Multimodal Intention Knowledge Distillation from Large Language Models for Social-Media Commonsense DiscoveryarXiv2024-02
KnowTuning: Knowledge-aware Fine-tuning for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02Github
TinyLLM: Learning a Small Student from Multiple Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Mixed Distillation Helps Smaller Language Model Better ReasoningarXiv2023-12
Tailoring Self-Rationalizers with Multi-Reward DistillationarXiv2023-11GithubData
Orca 2: Teaching Small Language Models How to ReasonarXiv2023-11
Mammoth: Building Math Generalist Models through Hybrid Instruction TuningarXiv2023-09GithubData
PandaLM: An Automatic Evaluation Benchmark for LLM Instruction Tuning OptimizationarXiv2023-06GithubData
Symbolic Chain-of-Thought Distillation: Small Models Can Also "Think" Step-by-StepACL2023-06
Orca: Progressive Learning from Complex Explanation Traces of GPT-4arXiv2023-06
Distilling Step-by-Step! Outperforming Larger Language Models with Less Training Data and Smaller Model SizesACL2023-05GithubData
Impossible Distillation: from Low-Quality Model to High-Quality Dataset & Model for Summarization and ParaphrasingarXiv2023-05Github
Baize: An Open-Source Chat Model with Parameter-Efficient Tuning on Self-Chat DataEMNLP2023-04GithubData
ChatGPT outperforms crowd workers for text-annotation tasksarXiv2023-03
Annollm: Making large language models to be better crowdsourced annotatorsarXiv2023-03
GPT-4All: Training an Assistant-Style Chatbot with Large Scale Data Distillation from GPT-3.5-Turbo-2023-03Github
Specializing Smaller Language Models towards Multi-Step ReasoningarXiv2023-01
Is GPT-3 a Good Data Annotator?ACL2022-12Github
Large Language Models Are Reasoning TeachersACL2022-12GithubData
Teaching Small Language Models to ReasonACL2022-12
Explanations from Large Language Models Make Small Reasoners BetterarXiv2022-10
Want To Reduce Labeling Cost? GPT-3 Can HelpFindings of EMNLP2021-08

Expansion

TitleVenueDateCodeData
Instruction Fusion: Advancing Prompt Evolution through HybridizationarXiv2023-12
An Empirical Study of Instruction-tuning Large Language Models in ChineseEMNLP2023-10GithubData
PromptMix: A Class Boundary Augmentation Method for Large Language Model DistillationEMNLP2023-10Github
Wizardmath: Empowering mathematical reasoning for large language models via reinforced evol-instructarXiv2023-08Github
Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for CodearXiv2023-08Github
WizardCoder: Empowering Code Large Language Models with Evol-InstructICLR2023-06Github
Principle-Driven Self-Alignment of Language Models from Scratch with Minimal Human SupervisionNeurIPS2023-05GithubData
Targeted Data Generation: Finding and Fixing Model WeaknessesACL2023-05Github
Wizardlm: Empowering large language models to follow complex instructionsICLR2023-04GithubData
Data
LaMini-LM: A Diverse Herd of Distilled Models from Large-Scale InstructionsarXiv2023-04GithubData
Alpaca: Aligning Language Model with Human Preferences-2023-03GithubData
Code Alpaca: An Instruction-following LLaMA model for code generation-2023-03GithubData
Exploring the Impact of Instruction Data Scaling on Large Language Models: An Empirical Study on Real-World Use CasesarXiv2023-03GithubData
AugGPT: Leveraging ChatGPT for Text Data AugmentationarXiv2023-02Github
Self-instruct: Aligning language model with self generated instructionsACL2022-12GithubData
Symbolic Knowledge Distillation: from General Language Models to Commonsense ModelsNAACL2021-10GithubData

Curation

Feature

TitleVenueDateCodeData
PromptKD: Distilling Student-Friendly Knowledge for Generative Language Models via Prompt TuningEMNLP Findings2024-02GithubData
Rethinking Kullback-Leibler Divergence in Knowledge Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-04
Direct Alignment of Draft Model for Speculative Decoding with Chat-Fine-Tuned LLMsarXiv2024-03
DB-LLM: Accurate Dual-Binarization for Efficient LLMsarXiv2024-02
BitDistiller: Unleashing the Potential of Sub-4-Bit LLMs via Self-DistillationarXiv2024-02Github
DISTILLM: Towards Streamlined Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02Github
Towards Cross-Tokenizer Distillation: the Universal Logit Distillation Loss for LLMsarXiv2024-02GithubData
Revisiting Knowledge Distillation for Autoregressive Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Knowledge Fusion of Large Language ModelsICLR2024-01Github
Improving In-context Learning via Bidirectional AlignmentarXiv2023-12
Towards the Fundamental Limits of Knowledge Transfer over Finite DomainsNeurIPS2023-10
Baby Llama: Knowledge Distillation from an Ensemble of Teachers Trained on a Small Dataset with No Performance PenaltyCoNLL2023-08GithubData
f-Divergence Minimization for Sequence-Level Knowledge DistillationACL2023-07GithubData
MiniLLM: Knowledge Distillation of Large Language ModelsICLR2023-06GithubData
On-Policy Distillation of Language Models: Learning from Self-Generated MistakesICLR2023-06
LLM-QAT: Data-Free Quantization Aware Training for Large Language ModelsarXiv2023-05GithubData
Less is more: Task-aware layer-wise distillation for language model compressionPMLR2022-10Github

Feedback

TitleVenueDateCodeData
PromptKD: Distilling Student-Friendly Knowledge for Generative Language Models via Prompt TuningEMNLP Findings2024-02GithubData
Evidence-Focused Fact Summarization for Knowledge-Augmented Zero-Shot Question AnsweringarXiv2024-03
Evolving Knowledge Distillation with Large Language Models and Active LearningarXiv2024-03
Direct Language Model Alignment from Online AI FeedbackarXiv2024-02
DISTILLM: Towards Streamlined Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02Github
Improving Large Language Models via Fine-grained Reinforcement Learning with Minimum Editing ConstraintarXiv2024-01Github
Beyond Imitation: Leveraging Fine-grained Quality Signals for AlignmentarXiv2023-11
Can Language Models Teach Weaker Agents? Teacher Explanations Improve Students via PersonalizationICLR2023-10Github
Motif: Intrinsic Motivation from Artificial Intelligence FeedbackICLR2023-10Github
Ultrafeedback: Boosting language models with high-quality feedbackarXiv2023-10GithubData
Personalised Distillation: Empowering Open-Sourced LLMs with Adaptive Learning for Code GenerationEMNLP2023-10Github
CycleAlign: Iterative Distillation from Black-box LLM to White-box Models for Better Human AlignmentarXiv2023-10
Rlaif: Scaling Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback with AI FeedbackarXiv2023-09
Wizardmath: Empowering mathematical reasoning for large language models via reinforced evol-instructarXiv2023-08Github
On-Policy Distillation of Language Models: Learning from Self-Generated MistakesICLR2023-06
MiniLLM: Knowledge Distillation of Large Language ModelsICLR2023-06GithubData
Language to Rewards for Robotic Skill SynthesisarXiv2023-06Github
Lion: Adversarial Distillation of Closed-Source Large Language ModelEMNLP2023-05Github
SelFee: Iterative Self-Revising LLM Empowered by Self-Feedback GenerationarXiv2023-05
LaMini-LM: A Diverse Herd of Distilled Models from Large-Scale InstructionsarXiv2023-04GithubData
Reward Design with Language ModelsICLR2023-03Github
Consitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI FeedbackarXiv2022-12

Self-Knowledge

TitleVenueDateCodeData
V-STaR: Training Verifiers for Self-Taught ReasonersarXiv2024-02
Self-Rewarding Language ModelsarXiv2024-01Github
Self-Play Fine-Tuning Converts Weak Language Models to Strong Language ModelsarXiv2024-01GithubData
Kun: Answer Polishment for Chinese Self-Alignment with Instruction Back-TranslationarXiv2024-01GithubData
APT: Adaptive Pruning and Tuning Pretrained Language Models for Efficient Training and InferencearXiv2024-01
GRATH: Gradual Self-Truthifying for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-01
Beyond human data: Scaling self-training for problem-solving with language modelsarXiv2023-12
Self-Knowledge Guided Retrieval Augmentation for Large Language ModelsEMNLP Findings2023-10Github
RAIN: Your Language Models Can Align Themselves without FinetuningarXiv2023-09Github
Reinforced Self-Training (ReST) for Language ModelingarXiv2023-08
Humback: Self-Alignment with Instruction BacktranslationICLR2023-08Github
Self-Alignment of Large Language Models via Reinforcement Learning from Contrast DistillationICLR2023-07Github
Self-Improvement of Large Language Models via Reinforcement Learning from Human FeedbackEMNLP2023-06
Principle-Driven Self-Alignment of Language Models from Scratch with Minimal Human SupervisionNeurIPS2023-05GithubData
Impossible Distillation: from Low-Quality Model to High-Quality Dataset & Model for Summarization and ParaphrasingarXiv2023-05Github
Language Model Self-improvement by Reinforcement Learning ContemplationarXiv2023-05
Baize: An Open-Source Chat Model with Parameter-Efficient Tuning on Self-Chat DataEMNLP2023-04GithubData
Self-instruct: Aligning language model with self generated instructionsACL2022-12GithubData
Large Language Models Can Self-ImproveEMNLP2022-10
STaR: Bootstrapping Reasoning With ReasoningNeurIPS2022-03Github

Distillation Algorithms

Supervised Fine-Tuning

Due to the large number of works applying supervised fine-tuning, we only list the most representative ones here.

Divergence and Similarity

TitleVenueDateCodeData
PromptKD: Distilling Student-Friendly Knowledge for Generative Language Models via Prompt TuningEMNLP Findings2024-02GithubData
Rethinking Kullback-Leibler Divergence in Knowledge Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-04
Weight-Inherited Distillation for Task-Agnostic BERT CompressionNAACL2024-03Github
BitDistiller: Unleashing the Potential of Sub-4-Bit LLMs via Self-DistillationarXiv2024-02Github
DISTILLM: Towards Streamlined Distillation for Large Language ModelsarXiv2024-02Github
Towards Cross-Tokenizer Distillation: the Universal Logit Distillation Loss for LLMsarXiv2024-02GithubData
Revisiting Knowledge Distillation for Autoregressive Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Knowledge Distillation for Closed-Source Language ModelsarXiv2024-01
Knowledge Fusion of Large Language ModelsICLR2024-01Github
Improving In-context Learning via Bidirectional AlignmentarXiv2023-12
Towards the Fundamental Limits of Knowledge Transfer over Finite DomainsNeurIPS2023-10
Baby Llama: Knowledge Distillation from an Ensemble of Teachers Trained on a Small Dataset with No Performance PenaltyCoNLL2023-08GithubData
f-Divergence Minimization for Sequence-Level Knowledge DistillationACL2023-07GithubData
f-Divergence Minimization for Sequence-Level Knowledge DistillationACL2023-07GithubData
MiniLLM: Knowledge Distillation of Large Language ModelsICLR2023-06GithubData
On-Policy Distillation of Language Models: Learning from Self-Generated MistakesICLR2023-06
LLM-QAT: Data-Free Quantization Aware Training for Large Language ModelsarXiv2023-05GithubData
Less is more: Task-aware layer-wise distillation for language model compressionPMLR2022-10Github
DistilBERT, a distilled version of BERT: smaller, faster, cheaper and lighterNeurIPS2019-10

Reinforcement Learning

Rank Optimization

Skill Distillation

Context Following

Instruction Following

TitleVenueDateCodeData
Synthetic Data (Almost) from Scratch: Generalized Instruction Tuning for Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Revisiting Knowledge Distillation for Autoregressive Language ModelsarXiv2024-02
Selective Reflection-Tuning: Student-Selected Data Recycling for LLM Instruction-TuningarXiv2024-02GithubData
Phi-2: The surprising power of small language models-2023-12
What Makes Good Data for Alignment? A Comprehensive Study of Automatic Data Selection in Instruction TuningICLR2023-12GithubData
MUFFIN: Curating Multi-Faceted Instructions for Improving Instruction-FollowingarXiv2023-12GithubData
Instruction Fusion: Advancing Prompt Evolution through HybridizationarXiv2023-12
Orca 2: Teaching Small Language Models How to ReasonarXiv2023-11
Reflection-Tuning: Data Recycling Improves LLM Instruction-TuningNIPS Workshop2023-10GithubData
Textbooks Are All You Need II: Phi-1.5 Technical ReportarXiv2023-09
Orca: Progressive Learning from Complex Explanation Traces of GPT-4arXiv2023-06
Textbooks Are All You Need: A Large-Scale Instructional Text Data Set for Language ModelsarXiv2023-06
SelFee: Iterative Self-Revising LLM Empowered by Self-Feedback GenerationarXiv2023-05
ExpertPrompting: Instructing Large Language Models to be Distinguished ExpertsarXiv2023-05GithubData
LaMini-LM: A Diverse Herd of Distilled Models from Large-Scale InstructionsarXiv2023-04GithubData
Wizardlm: Empowering large language models to follow complex instructionsICLR2023-04GithubData
Data
Koala: A Dialogue Model for Academic Research-2023-04GithubData
Alpaca: Aligning Language Model with Human Preferences-2023-03GithubData
Vicuna: An Open-Source Chatbot Impressing GPT-4 with 90% ChatGPT Quality*-2023-03GithubData
Self-instruct: Aligning language model with self generated instructionsACL2022-12GithubData

Multi-turn Dialogue

RAG Capability

Alignment

Thinking Pattern

Preference

Value

Agent

Tool Using

Planning

NLP Task Specialization

NLU

NLG

Information Retrieval

Recommendation

Text Generation Evaluation

Code

Multi-Modality

Summary Table


Figure: A summary of representative works about skill distillation.

Verticalization Distillation

Law

Medical & Healthcare

Finance

Science

TitleVenueDateCodeData
MuseGraph: Graph-oriented Instruction Tuning of Large Language Models for Generic Graph MiningarXiv2024-03
SciGLM: Training Scientific Language Models with Self-Reflective Instruction Annotation and TuningarXiv2024-01Github
AstroLLaMA-Chat: Scaling AstroLLaMA with Conversational and Diverse DatasetsarXiv2024-01
GeoGalactica: A Scientific Large Language Model in GeosciencearXiv2024-01GithubData
InstructMol: Multi-Modal Integration for Building a Versatile and Reliable Molecular Assistant in Drug DiscoveryarXiv2023-11Github
LLM-Prop: Predicting Physical And Electronic Properties Of Crystalline Solids From Their Text DescriptionsarXiv2023-10Github
OceanGPT: A Large Language Model for Ocean Science TasksarXiv2023-10GithubData
MarineGPT: Unlocking Secrets of Ocean to the PublicarXiv2023-10Github
Mammoth: Building Math Generalist Models through Hybrid Instruction TuningarXiv2023-09GithubData
ToRA: A Tool-Integrated Reasoning Agent for Mathematical Problem SolvingICLR2023-09Github
DARWIN Series: Domain Specific Large Language Models for Natural SciencearXiv2023-08Github
Wizardmath: Empowering mathematical reasoning for large language models via reinforced evol-instructarXiv2023-08Github
Biomedgpt: Open Multimodal Generative Pre-trained Transformer for BiomedicinearXiv2023-08GithubData
Prot2Text: Multimodal Protein’s Function Generation with GNNs and TransformersNeurIPS2023-07
xTrimoPGLM: Unified 100B-Scale Pre-trained Transformer for Deciphering the Language of ProteinbioRxiv2023-07
GIMLET: A Unified Graph-Text Model for Instruction-Based Molecule Zero-Shot LearningNeurIPS2023-06GithubData
K2: A Foundation Language Model for Geoscience Knowledge Understanding and UtilizationarXiv2023-06Github
Visual Instruction Tuning: A Comprehensive Study of Visual Instruction Tuning for Large Language ModelsNeurIPS2023-04GithubData

Misc.

Encoder-based KD

Note: Our survey mainly focuses on generative LLMs, and thus the encoder-based KD is not included in the survey. However, we are also interested in this topic and continue to update the latest works in this area.

TODO List

  • Add works about O1-like distillation. Stay tuned!

Citation

If you find this repository helpful, please consider citing the following paper:

@misc{xu2024survey,
      title={A Survey on Knowledge Distillation of Large Language Models}, 
      author={Xiaohan Xu and Ming Li and Chongyang Tao and Tao Shen and Reynold Cheng and Jinyang Li and Can Xu and Dacheng Tao and Tianyi Zhou},
      year={2024},
      eprint={2402.13116},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL}
}

Star History

Star History Chart

alignment
compression
data-augmentation
data-synthesis
feedback
instruction-following
kd
knowledge-distillation
large-language-model
llm
multi-modal
self-distillation
self-training
supervised-finetuning
survey

Contributors

Tebmer

54 commits

alphadl

2 commits