# Rethinking the Instruction Quality: LIFT is What You Need

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.11508 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11508/

## Key facts

- Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 21 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Dec 2023.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-benchmarks-and-evaluation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05457/) (2018)
- [HellaSwag: Can a Machine Really Finish Your Sentence?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07830/) (2019)
- [Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01652/) (2021)
- [Program Synthesis with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07732/) (2021)
- [TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07958/) (2021)
- [Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12950/) (2023)
- [WizardLM: Empowering large pre-trained language models to follow complex instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12244/) (2023)
- [LIMA: Less Is More for Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11206/) (2023)
- [WizardCoder: Empowering Code Large Language Models with Evol-Instruct](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08568/) (2023)
- [Harnessing the Power of LLMs in Practice: A Survey on ChatGPT and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13712/) (2023)
- [CodeT5+: Open Code Large Language Models for Code Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.07922/) (2023)
- [From Quantity to Quality: Boosting LLM Performance with Self-Guided Data Selection for Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12032/) (2023)
- [Platypus: Quick, Cheap, and Powerful Refinement of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07317/) (2023)
- [MoDS: Model-oriented Data Selection for Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15653/) (2023)
- [Instruction Mining: Instruction Data Selection for Tuning Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06290/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [A Survey on Data Selection for LLM Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05123/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Multimodal Large Language Model from A Data-centric Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16640/) (2024)
- [Selective Reflection-Tuning: Student-Selected Data Recycling for LLM Instruction-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10110/) (2024)
- [KeyVideoLLM: Towards Large-scale Video Keyframe Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03104/) (2024)
- [The Best Instruction-Tuning Data are Those That Fit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.04194/) (2025)
- [Instruction Tuning With Loss Over Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14394/) (2024)
- [Principled Data Selection for Alignment: The Hidden Risks of Difficult Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09650/) (2025)
- [Unleashing the Power of Data Tsunami: A Comprehensive Survey on Data Assessment and Selection for Instruction Tuning of Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02085/) (2024)
- [Improving Data Efficiency via Curating LLM-Driven Rating Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10877/) (2024)
- [Code Less, Align More: Efficient LLM Fine-tuning for Code Generation with Data Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05040/) (2024)
- [SHED: Shapley-Based Automated Dataset Refinement for Instruction Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00705/) (2024)
- [CodeACT: Code Adaptive Compute-efficient Tuning Framework for Code LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02193/) (2024)
- [Star-Agents: Automatic Data Optimization with LLM Agents for Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14497/) (2024)
- [Learning from Diverse Reasoning Paths with Routing and Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.16861/) (2025)
- [Synth-Empathy: Towards High-Quality Synthetic Empathy Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21669/) (2024)
- [Only-IF:Revealing the Decisive Effect of Instruction Diversity on Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04717/) (2024)
- [PAS: Data-Efficient Plug-and-Play Prompt Augmentation System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06027/) (2024)
- [Middo: Model-Informed Dynamic Data Optimization for Enhanced LLM Fine-Tuning via Closed-Loop Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21589/) (2025)
- [SynthVLM: Towards High-Quality and Efficient Synthesis of Image-Caption Datasets for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20756/) (2024)
- [Baichuan Alignment Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14940/) (2024)
- [Optimizing Instruction Synthesis: Effective Exploration of Evolutionary Space with Tree Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10392/) (2024)
- [Data-efficient LLM Fine-tuning for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12687/) (2025)
- [DataFlex: A Unified Framework for Data-Centric Dynamic Training of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26164/) (2026)
- [ImagebindDC: Compressing Multi-modal Data with Imagebind-based Condensation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08263/) (2025)
- [Leveraging Open Knowledge for Advancing Task Expertise in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15915/) (2024)
- [DataSculpt: Crafting Data Landscapes for Long-Context LLMs through Multi-Objective Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00997/) (2024)
- [From Symbolic Tasks to Code Generation: Diversification Yields Better Task Performers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19787/) (2024)
- [Data Proportion Detection for Optimized Data Management for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17527/) (2024)
- [Cream of the Crop: Harvesting Rich, Scalable and Transferable Multi-Modal Data for Instruction Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13383/) (2025)
- [ReviewInstruct: A Review-Driven Multi-Turn Conversations Generation Method for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11010/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Instruction tuning, a specialized technique to enhance large language model (LLM) performance via instruction datasets, relies heavily on the quality of employed data. Existing quality improvement methods alter instruction data through dataset expansion or curation. However, the expansion method risks data redundancy, potentially compromising LLM performance, while the curation approach confines the LLM's potential to the original dataset. Our aim is to surpass the original data quality without encountering these shortcomings. To achieve this, we propose LIFT (LLM Instruction Fusion Transfer), a novel and versatile paradigm designed to elevate the instruction quality to new heights. LIFT strategically broadens data distribution to encompass more high-quality subspaces and eliminates redundancy, concentrating on high-quality segments across overall data subspaces. Experimental results demonstrate that, even with a limited quantity of high-quality instruction data selected by our paradigm, LLMs not only consistently uphold robust performance across various tasks but also surpass some state-of-the-art results, highlighting the significant improvement in instruction quality achieved by our paradigm.