How do token sampling strategies influence LLM behavior and output quality?

Token sampling strategies control how LLMs select next tokens, directly affecting creativity, determinism, coherence, and diversity.

LLMs generate text probabilistically by predicting token distributions. Sampling strategies determine how those probabilities are converted into actual outputs.

Common sampling methods include:

Always selecting the highest-probability token.

Adjusting randomness in token probabilities.

Restricting selection to the top k probable tokens.

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