Continuously Steering LLMs Sensitivity to Contextual Knowledge with Proxy Models

ACL ARR 2025 February Submission7062 Authors

Abstract: In Large Language Models (LLMs) generation, there exist knowledge conflicts, and scenarios where parametric knowledge contradicts knowledge provided in the context. Previous works studied tuning, decoding algorithms, or locating and editing context-aware neurons to adapt LLMs to be faithful to new contextual knowledge. However, they are usually inefficient or ineffective for large models, not workable for black-box models, or unable to continuously adjust LLMs' sensitivity to the knowledge provided in the context. To mitigate these problems, we propose CSKS (Continuously Steering Knowledge Sensitivity), a simple framework that can steer LLMs' sensitivity to contextual knowledge continuously at a lightweight cost. Specifically, we tune two small LMs (i.e. proxy models) and use the difference in their output distributions to shift the original distribution of an LLM without modifying the LLM weights. In the evaluation process, we design synthetic data and fine-grained metrics to measure models' sensitivity to contextual knowledge. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our framework achieves continuous and precise control over LLMs' sensitivity to contextual knowledge, enabling both increased sensitivity and reduced sensitivity, thereby allowing LLMs to prioritize either contextual or parametric knowledge as needed flexibly.

Paper Type: Long

Research Area: NLP Applications

Research Area Keywords: knowledge conflict, control of language models

Languages Studied: English

Submission Number: 7062