Large language models such as GPT and Llama are trained with a next-token prediction loss. In this work, we suggest that training language models to predict multiple future tokens at once results in higher sample efficiency. More specifically, at each position in the training corpus, we ask the model to predict the following n tokens using n independent output heads, operating on top of a shared model trunk. Considering multi-token prediction as an auxiliary training task, we measure improved downstream capabilities with no overhead in training time for both code and natural language models. The method is increasingly useful for larger model sizes, and keeps its appeal when training for multiple epochs. Gains are especially pronounced on generative benchmarks like coding, where our models consistently outperform strong baselines by several percentage points. Our 13B parameter models solves 12 % more problems on HumanEval and 17 % more on MBPP than comparable next-token models. Experiments on small algorithmic tasks demonstrate that multi-token prediction is favorable for the development of induction heads and algorithmic reasoning capabilities. As an additional benefit, models trained with 4-token prediction are up to 3 times faster at inference, even with large batch sizes.

我们建议通过训练语言模型来预测多个未来标记，以提高样本利用效率，并对其下游能力进行改进，特别是在多词预测作为辅助训练任务时，在代码和自然语言生成模型方面获得了显著的改善。

通过多令牌预测实现更好、更快的大型语言模型