Pre-trained language models (PLM) have revolutionized the NLP landscape, achieving stellar performances across diverse tasks. These models, while benefiting from vast training data, often require fine-tuning on specific data to cater to distinct downstream tasks. However, this data adaptation process has inherent security and privacy concerns, primarily when leveraging user-generated, device-residing data. Federated learning (FL) provides a solution, allowing collaborative model fine-tuning without centralized data collection. However, applying FL to finetune PLMs is hampered by challenges, including restricted model parameter access, high computational requirements, and communication overheads. This paper introduces Federated Black-box Prompt Tuning (FedBPT), a framework designed to address these challenges. FedBPT does not require the clients to access the model parameters. By focusing on training optimal prompts and utilizing gradient-free optimization methods, FedBPT reduces the number of exchanged variables, boosts communication efficiency, and minimizes computational and storage costs. Experiments highlight the framework's ability to drastically cut communication and memory costs while maintaining competitive performance. Ultimately, FedBPT presents a promising solution for efficient, privacy-preserving fine-tuning of PLM in the age of large language models.

该论文介绍了一种名为Federated Black-box Prompt Tuning (FedBPT)的框架，通过优化提示语并利用无梯度的优化方法，实现了在保护隐私的前提下，减少模型参数交互、提升通信效率、降低计算和存储成本，从而有效地进行预训练语言模型的细调。

FedBPT: 大型语言模型的高效联邦式黑盒提示调整