CLOOPD: Closing the Learner Loop in On-Policy Distillation

📅 2026-09-21
📈 Citations: 0
Influential: 0
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🤖 AI Summary
本文提出CLOOPD框架,通过分离教师信号获取与学生实现过程,改进了在线策略蒸馏中学生模型的学习效率和资源利用问题。
📝 Abstract
On-policy distillation (OPD) pays twice for each fresh batch: the student generates trajectories and a stronger teacher scores them. Existing methods improve which trajectories are scored and how the teacher signal is constructed, but usually consume it with one actor update. We introduce CLOOPD, a closed-loop framework separating teacher-signal acquisition from student-side realization. CLOOPD selects an adaptive $α$ waypoint inside a KL envelope, freezes the scored batch and its advantages, re-forwards the student after each actor pass, measures realization, and allocates actor work under a separate token budget. The framework includes deterministic two- and three-pass policies, token-priced CLOOPD-TPMR, and a budget-matched control. Across six 300-step runs on an 8-H20 node, every CLOOPD policy improves the one-pass TOP-D anchor at comparable teacher-token scale: macro accuracy rises from 15.41 to 17.78 with CLOOPD-Fixed2 and 19.36 with CLOOPD-Fixed3. At step 100, CLOOPD-Fixed3 reaches 15.35, nearly matching TOP-D at step 300 while using 67.2% fewer teacher-scored tokens and 28.0% fewer GPU-hours. Earlier 8-A100 ablations show adaptive $α$ eliminates observed trust-envelope violations; a third pass adds headroom. These results position CLOOPD as a framework for budgeting how fully students learn from teacher-scored tokens.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

on-policy distillation
actor update
teacher signal
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

closed-loop framework
adaptive α waypoint
token budget
on-policy distillation
teacher-scored tokens
K
Keye Zheng
Alibaba Group
H
Hanyu Li
Z
Zhan Cheng
Y
Yuan Gao