Large Language Models (LLMs) are gaining significant popularity in recent years for specialized tasks using prompts due to their low computational cost. Standard methods like prefix tuning utilize special, modifiable tokens that lack semantic meaning and require extensive training for best performance, often falling short. In this context, we propose a novel method called Semantic Knowledge Tuning (SK-Tuning) for prompt and prefix tuning that employs meaningful words instead of random tokens. This method involves using a fixed LLM to understand and process the semantic content of the prompt through zero-shot capabilities. Following this, it integrates the processed prompt with the input text to improve the model's performance on particular tasks. Our experimental results show that SK-Tuning exhibits faster training times, fewer parameters, and superior performance on tasks such as text classification and understanding compared to other tuning methods. This approach offers a promising method for optimizing the efficiency and effectiveness of LLMs in processing language tasks.

The rapid advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing (NLP) and related fields. However, fine-tuning these models for specific tasks remains computationally expensive and risks degrading pre-learned features. To address these challenges, we propose Propulsion, a novel parameter efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) method designed to optimize task-specific performance while drastically reducing computational overhead. Inspired by the concept of controlled adjustments in physical motion, Propulsion selectively re-scales specific dimensions of a pre-trained model, guiding output predictions toward task objectives without modifying the model's parameters. By introducing lightweight, trainable Propulsion parameters at the pre-trained layer, we minimize the number of parameters updated during fine-tuning, preventing overfitting or overwriting of existing knowledge. Our theoretical analysis, supported by Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) theory, shows that Propulsion approximates the performance of full fine-tuning with far fewer trainable parameters. Empirically, Propulsion reduces the parameter count from 355.3 million to just 0.086 million, achieving over a 10x reduction compared to standard approaches like LoRA while maintaining competitive performance across benchmarks.