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Sequence generation applications require satisfying semantic constraints, such as ensuring that programs are correct, using certain keywords, or avoiding undesirable content. Language models, whether fine-tuned or prompted with few-shot demonstrations, frequently violate these constraints, and lack a mechanism to iteratively revise their outputs. Moreover, some powerful language models are of extreme scale or inaccessible, making it inefficient, if not infeasible, to update their parameters for task-specific adaptation. We present Self-Correction, an approach that decouples an imperfect base generator (an off-the-shelf language model or supervised sequence-to-sequence model) from a separate corrector that learns to iteratively correct imperfect generations. To train the corrector, we propose an online training procedure that can use either scalar or natural language feedback on intermediate imperfect generations. We show that Self-Correction improves upon the base generator in three diverse generation tasks - mathematical program synthesis, lexically-constrained generation, and toxicity control - even when the corrector is much smaller than the base generator. 

Storytelling’s captivating potential makes it a fascinating research area, with implications for entertainment, education, therapy, and cognitive studies. In this paper, we propose Affective Story Generator (AffGen) for generating interesting narratives. AffGen introduces ‘intriguing twists’ in narratives by employing two novel techniques—Dynamic Beam Sizing and Affective Reranking. Dynamic Beam Sizing encourages less predictable, more captivating word choices using a contextual multi-arm bandit model. Affective Reranking prioritizes sentence candidates based on affect intensity. Our empirical evaluations, both automatic and human, demonstrate AffGen’s superior performance over existing baselines in generating affectively charged and interesting narratives. Our ablation study and analysis provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of AffGen.