Following multiple instructions is a crucial ability for large language models (LLMs). Evaluating this ability comes with significant challenges: (i) limited coherence between multiple instructions, (ii) positional bias where the order of instructions affects model performance, and (iii) a lack of objectively verifiable tasks. To address these issues, we introduce a benchmark designed to evaluate models' abilities to follow multiple instructions through sequential instruction following (SIFo) tasks. In SIFo, the successful completion of multiple instructions is verifiable by examining only the final instruction. Our benchmark evaluates instruction following using four tasks (text modification, question answering, mathematics, and security rule following), each assessing different aspects of sequential instruction following. Our evaluation of popular LLMs, both closed-source and open-source, shows that more recent and larger models significantly outperform their older and smaller counterparts on the SIFo tasks, validating the benchmark's effectiveness. All models struggle with following sequences of instructions, hinting at an important lack of robustness of today's language models.

评估大型语言模型（LLMs）遵循多个指令的能力面临诸多挑战，为解决这些问题，我们引入了一个基准测试，通过顺序指令跟踪任务评估模型的遵循多个指令的能力。

SIFo基准测试：探索大型语言模型的顺序指令跟随能力