Recognizing if LLM output can be grounded in evidence is central to many tasks in NLP: retrieval-augmented generation, summarization, document-grounded dialogue, and more. Current approaches to this kind of "fact-checking" are based on verifying each piece of a model generation against potential evidence using an LLM. However, this process can be very computationally expensive, requiring many calls to LLMs to check a single response. In this work, we show how to build small models that have GPT-4-level performance but for 400x lower cost. We do this by constructing synthetic training data with GPT-4, which involves creating realistic yet challenging instances of factual errors via a structured generation procedure. Training on this data teaches models to check each fact in the claim and recognize synthesis of information across sentences. For evaluation, we unify pre-existing datasets into a benchmark LLM-AggreFact, collected from recent work on fact-checking and grounding LLM generations. Our best system MiniCheck-FT5 (770M parameters) outperforms all systems of comparable size and reaches GPT-4 accuracy. We release LLM-AggreFact, code for data synthesis, and models.
Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG) systems have been actively studied and deployed across various industries to query on domain-specific knowledge base. However, evaluating these systems presents unique challenges due to the scarcity of domain-specific queries and corresponding ground truths, as well as a lack of systematic approaches to diagnosing the cause of failure cases -- whether they stem from knowledge deficits or issues related to system robustness. To address these challenges, we introduce GRAMMAR (GRounded And Modular Methodology for Assessment of RAG), an evaluation framework comprising two key elements: 1) a data generation process that leverages relational databases and LLMs to efficiently produce scalable query-answer pairs. This method facilitates the separation of query logic from linguistic variations for enhanced debugging capabilities; and 2) an evaluation framework that differentiates knowledge gaps from robustness and enables the identification of defective modules. Our empirical results underscore the limitations of current reference-free evaluation approaches and the reliability of GRAMMAR to accurately identify model vulnerabilities.
Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) large language models (LLM) have memory requirements that often exceed the GPU memory capacity, requiring costly parameter movement from secondary memories to the GPU for expert computation. In this work, we present Mixture of Near-Data Experts (MoNDE), a near-data computing solution that efficiently enables MoE LLM inference. MoNDE reduces the volume of MoE parameter movement by transferring only the $\textit{hot}$ experts to the GPU, while computing the remaining $\textit{cold}$ experts inside the host memory device. By replacing the transfers of massive expert parameters with the ones of small activations, MoNDE enables far more communication-efficient MoE inference, thereby resulting in substantial speedups over the existing parameter offloading frameworks for both encoder and decoder operations.
In the era of artificial intelligence, the diversity of data modalities and annotation formats often renders data unusable directly, requiring understanding and format conversion before it can be used by researchers or developers with different needs. To tackle this problem, this article introduces a framework called Dataset Description Language (DSDL) that aims to simplify dataset processing by providing a unified standard for AI datasets. DSDL adheres to the three basic practical principles of generic, portable, and extensible, using a unified standard to express data of different modalities and structures, facilitating the dissemination of AI data, and easily extending to new modalities and tasks. The standardized specifications of DSDL reduce the workload for users in data dissemination, processing, and usage. To further improve user convenience, we provide predefined DSDL templates for various tasks, convert mainstream datasets to comply with DSDL specifications, and provide comprehensive documentation and DSDL tools. These efforts aim to simplify the use of AI data, thereby improving the efficiency of AI development.
While image-based virtual try-on has made significant strides, emerging approaches still fall short of delivering high-fidelity and robust fitting images across various scenarios, as their models suffer from issues of ill-fitted garment styles and quality degrading during the training process, not to mention the lack of support for various combinations of attire. Therefore, we first propose a lightweight, scalable, operator known as Hydra Block for attire combinations. This is achieved through a parallel attention mechanism that facilitates the feature injection of multiple garments from conditionally encoded branches into the main network. Secondly, to significantly enhance the model's robustness and expressiveness in real-world scenarios, we evolve its potential across diverse settings by synthesizing the residuals of multiple models, as well as implementing a mask region boost strategy to overcome the instability caused by information leakage in existing models. Equipped with the above design, AnyFit surpasses all baselines on high-resolution benchmarks and real-world data by a large gap, excelling in producing well-fitting garments replete with photorealistic and rich details. Furthermore, AnyFit's impressive performance on high-fidelity virtual try-ons in any scenario from any image, paves a new path for future research within the fashion community.
Preferences are a pivotal component in practical reasoning, especially in tasks that involve decision-making over different options or courses of action that could be pursued. In this work, we focus on repairing and querying inconsistent knowledge bases in the form of graph databases, which involves finding a way to solve conflicts in the knowledge base and considering answers that are entailed from every possible repair, respectively. Without a priori domain knowledge, all possible repairs are equally preferred. Though that may be adequate for some settings, it seems reasonable to establish and exploit some form of preference order among the potential repairs. We study the problem of computing prioritized repairs over graph databases with data values, using a notion of consistency based on GXPath expressions as integrity constraints. We present several preference criteria based on the standard subset repair semantics, incorporating weights, multisets, and set-based priority levels. We show that it is possible to maintain the same computational complexity as in the case where no preference criterion is available for exploitation. Finally, we explore the complexity of consistent query answering in this setting and obtain tight lower and upper bounds for all the preference criteria introduced.
Dataset distillation is an advanced technique aimed at compressing datasets into significantly smaller counterparts, while preserving formidable training performance. Significant efforts have been devoted to promote evaluation accuracy under limited compression ratio while overlooked the robustness of distilled dataset. In this work, we introduce a comprehensive benchmark that, to the best of our knowledge, is the most extensive to date for evaluating the adversarial robustness of distilled datasets in a unified way. Our benchmark significantly expands upon prior efforts by incorporating a wider range of dataset distillation methods, including the latest advancements such as TESLA and SRe2L, a diverse array of adversarial attack methods, and evaluations across a broader and more extensive collection of datasets such as ImageNet-1K. Moreover, we assessed the robustness of these distilled datasets against representative adversarial attack algorithms like PGD and AutoAttack, while exploring their resilience from a frequency perspective. We also discovered that incorporating distilled data into the training batches of the original dataset can yield to improvement of robustness.
The LoRA-finetuning quantization of LLMs has been extensively studied to obtain accurate yet compact LLMs for deployment on resource-constrained hardware. However, existing methods cause the quantized LLM to severely degrade and even fail to benefit from the finetuning of LoRA. This paper proposes a novel IR-QLoRA for pushing quantized LLMs with LoRA to be highly accurate through information retention. The proposed IR-QLoRA mainly relies on two technologies derived from the perspective of unified information: (1) statistics-based Information Calibration Quantization allows the quantized parameters of LLM to retain original information accurately; (2) finetuning-based Information Elastic Connection makes LoRA utilizes elastic representation transformation with diverse information. Comprehensive experiments show that IR-QLoRA can significantly improve accuracy across LLaMA and LLaMA2 families under 2-4 bit-widths, e.g., 4- bit LLaMA-7B achieves 1.4% improvement on MMLU compared with the state-of-the-art methods. The significant performance gain requires only a tiny 0.31% additional time consumption, revealing the satisfactory efficiency of our IR-QLoRA. We highlight that IR-QLoRA enjoys excellent versatility, compatible with various frameworks (e.g., NormalFloat and Integer quantization) and brings general accuracy gains. The code is available at //github.com/htqin/ir-qlora.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have garnered considerable attention owing to their remarkable capabilities, leading to an increasing number of companies offering LLMs as services. Different LLMs achieve different performance at different costs. A challenge for users lies in choosing the LLMs that best fit their needs, balancing cost and performance. In this paper, we propose a framework for addressing the cost-effective query allocation problem for LLMs. Given a set of input queries and candidate LLMs, our framework, named OptLLM, provides users with a range of optimal solutions to choose from, aligning with their budget constraints and performance preferences, including options for maximizing accuracy and minimizing cost. OptLLM predicts the performance of candidate LLMs on each query using a multi-label classification model with uncertainty estimation and then iteratively generates a set of non-dominated solutions by destructing and reconstructing the current solution. To evaluate the effectiveness of OptLLM, we conduct extensive experiments on various types of tasks, including text classification, question answering, sentiment analysis, reasoning, and log parsing. Our experimental results demonstrate that OptLLM substantially reduces costs by 2.40% to 49.18% while achieving the same accuracy as the best LLM. Compared to other multi-objective optimization algorithms, OptLLM improves accuracy by 2.94% to 69.05% at the same cost or saves costs by 8.79% and 95.87% while maintaining the highest attainable accuracy.
With the exponential surge in diverse multi-modal data, traditional uni-modal retrieval methods struggle to meet the needs of users demanding access to data from various modalities. To address this, cross-modal retrieval has emerged, enabling interaction across modalities, facilitating semantic matching, and leveraging complementarity and consistency between different modal data. Although prior literature undertook a review of the cross-modal retrieval field, it exhibits numerous deficiencies pertaining to timeliness, taxonomy, and comprehensiveness. This paper conducts a comprehensive review of cross-modal retrieval's evolution, spanning from shallow statistical analysis techniques to vision-language pre-training models. Commencing with a comprehensive taxonomy grounded in machine learning paradigms, mechanisms, and models, the paper then delves deeply into the principles and architectures underpinning existing cross-modal retrieval methods. Furthermore, it offers an overview of widely used benchmarks, metrics, and performances. Lastly, the paper probes the prospects and challenges that confront contemporary cross-modal retrieval, while engaging in a discourse on potential directions for further progress in the field. To facilitate the research on cross-modal retrieval, we develop an open-source code repository at //github.com/BMC-SDNU/Cross-Modal-Retrieval.
With the rapid increase of large-scale, real-world datasets, it becomes critical to address the problem of long-tailed data distribution (i.e., a few classes account for most of the data, while most classes are under-represented). Existing solutions typically adopt class re-balancing strategies such as re-sampling and re-weighting based on the number of observations for each class. In this work, we argue that as the number of samples increases, the additional benefit of a newly added data point will diminish. We introduce a novel theoretical framework to measure data overlap by associating with each sample a small neighboring region rather than a single point. The effective number of samples is defined as the volume of samples and can be calculated by a simple formula $(1-\beta^{n})/(1-\beta)$, where $n$ is the number of samples and $\beta \in [0,1)$ is a hyperparameter. We design a re-weighting scheme that uses the effective number of samples for each class to re-balance the loss, thereby yielding a class-balanced loss. Comprehensive experiments are conducted on artificially induced long-tailed CIFAR datasets and large-scale datasets including ImageNet and iNaturalist. Our results show that when trained with the proposed class-balanced loss, the network is able to achieve significant performance gains on long-tailed datasets.