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The Impact of Language Mixing on Bilingual LLM Reasoning

Created by
  • Haebom

Author

Yihao Li, Jiayi Xin, Miranda Muqing Miao, Qi Long, Lyle Ungar

Outline

This paper studies the phenomenon of language switching in a Chinese-English bilingual inference model. The results reveal that language switching is a strategic behavior that enhances inference ability. Specifically, the reinforcement learning-based training phase induces language mixing, and suppressing language mixing reduces accuracy. Furthermore, we demonstrate that accuracy can be improved by guiding decoding using lightweight probes that predict the benefit of language switching.

Takeaways, Limitations

Takeaways:
Language mixing is not a simple byproduct of multilingual models, but a strategic behavior that enhances reasoning ability.
Reinforcement learning-based training is a key step in inducing language mixing.
Suppressing language mixing reduces model accuracy.
Model performance can be improved by using lightweight probes that predict the benefit of language switching.
Limitations:
Only experimental results for the MATH500 dataset are presented, so further research on generalizability is needed.
Further experiments on different types of bilingual models and datasets are needed to verify the generality of the results.
A more in-depth analysis of the mechanisms of language switching and optimal language switching strategies is needed.
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