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New AR1-ZO method boosts LoRA fine-tuning with Zeroth-Order optimization

Researchers have developed AR1-ZO, a novel method for fine-tuning large language models using Zeroth-Order optimization and Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA). This technique addresses the challenge of effectively increasing LoRA rank without compromising the signal-to-noise ratio in ZO queries. AR1-ZO achieves this by querying alternating rank-1 atoms with topology-aware scaling, which restores a rank-invariant active signal without requiring additional bases or forward passes. Experiments on OPT and Qwen3 models demonstrate that AR1-ZO enables high-rank LoRA fine-tuning to be effective within standard ZO query budgets. AI

IMPACT Enables more efficient and effective fine-tuning of large language models by improving Zeroth-Order optimization techniques with LoRA.

RANK_REASON The cluster contains an academic paper detailing a new method for fine-tuning large language models. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=1.0]

Read on arXiv cs.AI →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

New AR1-ZO method boosts LoRA fine-tuning with Zeroth-Order optimization

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The cluster contains an academic paper detailing a new method for fine-tuning large language models. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=1.0]
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COVERAGE [1]

  1. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Yao Shu ·

    AR1-ZO: Topology-Aware Rank-1 Zeroth-Order Queries for High-Rank LoRA Fine-Tuning

    Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization enables large-language-model fine-tuning without storing backpropagation activations, while LoRA supplies compact trainable adapters. Combining them creates a rank paradox: increasing LoRA rank improves adapter capacity, but standard two-point ZO ei…