# Explainable Token-level Noise Filtering for LLM Fine-tuning Datasets

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.14536 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14536/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03874/) (2021)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [Mistral 7B](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06825/) (2023)
- [Gemma 2: Improving Open Language Models at a Practical Size](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00118/) (2024)
- [PubMedQA: A Dataset for Biomedical Research Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06146/) (2019)
- [Few-Shot Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning is Better and Cheaper than In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05638/) (2022)
- [Large Language Model based Multi-Agents: A Survey of Progress and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01680/) (2024)
- [Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Large Models: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14608/) (2024)
- [Explainability for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01029/) (2023)
- [Using an LLM to Help With Code Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08177/) (2023)
- [SPoC: Search-based Pseudocode to Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04908/) (2019)
- [Superfiltering: Weak-to-Strong Data Filtering for Fast Instruction-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00530/) (2024)
- [Token-level Direct Preference Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11999/) (2024)
- [AugGPT: Leveraging ChatGPT for Text Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13007/) (2023)
- [Make Your LLM Fully Utilize the Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16811/) (2024)
- [Rethinking Interpretability in the Era of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01761/) (2024)
- [Data-efficient Fine-tuning for LLM-based Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17197/) (2024)
- [Can Large Language Models Explain Themselves? A Study of LLM-Generated Self-Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11207/) (2023)
- [Perplexed by Perplexity: Perplexity-Based Data Pruning With Small Reference Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20541/) (2024)
- [Scaling Laws for Data Filtering -- Data Curation cannot be Compute Agnostic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07177/) (2024)
- [Memory-efficient Transformers via Top-k Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06899/) (2021)
- [A Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation of LLM-Based Explainable Fault Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05487/) (2023)
- [TLCR: Token-Level Continuous Reward for Fine-grained Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16574/) (2024)
- [No More Fine-Tuning? An Experimental Evaluation of Prompt Tuning in Code Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.11680/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [AlphaToken: Decoupling Adaptation and Stability for Path-Aware Response Token Valuation in LLM Post-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01635/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have seen remarkable advancements, achieving state-of-the-art results in diverse applications. Fine-tuning, an important step for adapting LLMs to specific downstream tasks, typically involves further training on corresponding datasets. However, a fundamental discrepancy exists between current fine-tuning datasets and the token-level optimization mechanism of LLMs: most datasets are designed at the sentence-level, which introduces token-level noise, causing negative influence to final performance. In this paper, we propose XTF, an explainable token-level noise filtering framework. XTF decomposes the complex and subtle contributions of token-level data to the fine-tuning process into three distinct and explicit attributes (reasoning importance, knowledge novelty, and task relevance), which can be assessed using scoring methods, and then masks the gradients of selected noisy tokens accordingly to optimize the performance of fine-tuned LLMs. We conduct extensive experiments on three representative downstream tasks (math, code and medicine) across 7 mainstream LLMs. The results demonstrate that XTF can significantly improve downstream performance by up to 13.7% compared to regular fine-tuning. Our work highlights the importance of token-level dataset optimization, and demonstrates the potential of strategies based on attribute decomposition for explaining complex training mechanisms.