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LOCUS: Task-Aware Low-Rank Post-Training for Token-Efficient Language Generation

arxiv.org/abs/2609.11739

Updated 21 min ago · first seen 11 Sept 2026

paper_01M294FRCB09DFQST7FBQ9RJ72

Published
11 Sept 2026
T1 · 21 min ago
arXiv
2609.11739
T1 · 21 min ago
Category
cs.CL
T1 · 21 min ago

Abstract

Large language model serving costs scale directly with output sequence length, yet standard preference alignment often inflates response verbosity without improving utility. We study whether the parameterization of post-training updates affects generation length: low-rank subspaces alter sequence length without modifying the alignment loss. We present LOCUS, a method that selects a task-aware low-rank adaptation subspace to minimize output-token cost subject to a utility constraint. Within this subspace, post-training retains the native preference objective with a frozen backbone. Across Anthropic HH-RLHF dialogue preferences, we evaluate two $\sim$3B decoder backbones, Pythia-2.8B and Qwen2.5-3B, against protocol-matched full-parameter DPO and DrDPO branches and the released SamPO checkpoint. LOCUS reduces continuation length by up to 39.84\% on Pythia-2.8B and by 14.87--17.58\% on Qwen2.5-3B while updating only 0.24--0.28\% of model parameters, with no material change in the internal preference diagnostic.

Authors 1

Dongfang Zhao

Specification

Official page

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 21 min agohigh

Arxiv announce type
new

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 21 min agohigh

arXiv id
2609.11739

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 21 min agohigh

Categories
cs.CL, cs.AI, cs.LG

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 21 min agohigh

PDF

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 21 min agohigh

Primary category
cs.CL

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 21 min agohigh

Published
11 Sept 2026

Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 21 min agohigh

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Provenance

Attributed facts

9

Source tiers

T19

Freshest observation

21 min ago

Conflicts

None