We dive into Phi-2 and some of the major differences and use cases for a small language model (SLM) versus an LLM.

With only 2.7 billion parameters, Phi-2 surpasses the performance of Mistral and Llama-2 models at 7B and 13B parameters on various aggregated benchmarks. Notably, it achieves better performance compared to 25x larger Llama-2-70B model on multi-step reasoning tasks, i.e., coding and math. Furthermore, Phi-2 matches or outperforms the recently-announced Google Gemini Nano 2, despite being smaller in size. 

Find the transcript and live recording: https://arize.com/blog/phi-2-model

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We discuss HyDE: a thrilling zero-shot learning technique that combines GPT-3’s language understanding with contrastive text encoders.

HyDE revolutionizes information retrieval and grounding in real-world data by generating hypothetical documents from queries and retrieving similar real-world documents. It outperforms traditional unsupervised retrievers, rivaling fine-tuned retrievers across diverse tasks and languages. This leap in zero-shot learning efficiently retrieves relevant real-world information without task-specific fine-tuning, broadening AI model applicability and effectiveness.

Link to transcript and live recording: https://arize.com/blog/hyde-paper-reading-and-discussion/

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For the last paper read of the year, Arize CPO & Co-Founder, Aparna Dhinakaran, is joined by a Dat Ngo (ML Solutions Architect) and Aman Khan (Product Manager) for an exploration of the new kids on the block: Gemini and Mixtral-8x7B. 

There's a lot to cover, so this week's paper read is Part I in a series about Mixtral and Gemini. In Part I, we  provide some background and context for Mixtral 8x7B from Mistral AI, a high-quality sparse mixture of experts model (SMoE) that outperforms Llama 2 70B on most benchmarks with 6x faster inference Mixtral also matches or outperforms GPT3.5 on most benchmarks. This open-source model was optimized through supervised fine-tuning and direct preference optimization. 

Stay tuned for Part II in January, where we'll build on this conversation in and discuss Gemini-developed by teams at DeepMind and Google Research. 

Link to transcript and live recording: https://arize.com/blog/a-deep-dive-into-generatives-newest-models-mistral-mixtral-8x7b/

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We’re thrilled to be joined by Shuaichen Chang, LLM researcher and the author of this week’s paper to discuss his findings. Shuaichen’s research investigates the impact of prompt constructions on the performance of large language models (LLMs) in the text-to-SQL task, particularly focusing on zero-shot, single-domain, and cross-domain settings. Shuaichen and his team explore various strategies for prompt construction, evaluating the influence of database schema, content representation, and prompt length on LLMs’ effectiveness. The findings emphasize the importance of careful consideration in constructing prompts, highlighting the crucial role of table relationships and content, the effectiveness of in-domain demonstration examples, and the significance of prompt length in cross-domain scenarios.

Read the blog and watch the discussion: https://arize.com/blog/how-to-prompt-llms-for-text-to-sql-paper-reading/

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For this paper read, we’re joined by Samuel Marks, Postdoctoral Research Associate at Northeastern University, to discuss his paper, “The Geometry of Truth: Emergent Linear Structure in LLM Representation of True/False Datasets.” Samuel and his team curated high-quality datasets of true/false statements and used them to study in detail the structure of LLM representations of truth. Overall, they present evidence that language models linearly represent the truth or falsehood of factual statements and also introduce a novel technique, mass-mean probing, which generalizes better and is more causally implicated in model outputs than other probing techniques.

Find the transcript and read more here: https://arize.com/blog/the-geometry-of-truth-emergent-linear-structure-in-llm-representation-of-true-false-datasets-paper-reading/

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In this paper read, we discuss “Towards Monosemanticity: Decomposing Language Models Into Understandable Components,” a paper from Anthropic that addresses the challenge of understanding the inner workings of neural networks, drawing parallels with the complexity of human brain function. It explores the concept of “features,” (patterns of neuron activations) providing a more interpretable way to dissect neural networks. By decomposing a layer of neurons into thousands of features, this approach uncovers hidden model properties that are not evident when examining individual neurons. These features are demonstrated to be more interpretable and consistent, offering the potential to steer model behavior and improve AI safety.

Find the transcript and more here: https://arize.com/blog/decomposing-language-models-with-dictionary-learning-paper-reading/

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We discuss RankVicuna, the first fully open-source LLM capable of performing high-quality listwise reranking in a zero-shot setting. While researchers have successfully applied LLMs such as ChatGPT to reranking in an information retrieval context, such work has mostly been built on proprietary models hidden behind opaque API endpoints. This approach yields experimental results that are not reproducible and non-deterministic, threatening the veracity of outcomes that build on such shaky foundations. RankVicuna provides access to a fully open-source LLM and associated code infrastructure capable of performing high-quality reranking.

Find the transcript and more here: https://arize.com/blog/rankvicuna-paper-reading/

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Join Arize Co-Founder & CEO Jason Lopatecki, and ML Solutions Engineer, Sally-Ann DeLucia, as they discuss “Explaining Grokking Through Circuit Efficiency." This paper explores novel predictions about grokking, providing significant evidence in favor of its explanation. Most strikingly, the research conducted in this paper demonstrates two novel and surprising behaviors: ungrokking, in which a network regresses from perfect to low test accuracy, and semi-grokking, in which a network shows delayed generalization to partial rather than perfect test accuracy.

Find the transcript and more here: https://arize.com/blog/explaining-grokking-through-circuit-efficiency-paper-reading/

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Deep Papers is a podcast series featuring deep dives on today’s seminal AI papers and research. Each episode profiles the people and techniques behind cutting-edge breakthroughs in machine learning. 

In this episode, we discuss the paper, “Large Content And Behavior Models To Understand, Simulate, And Optimize Content And Behavior.” This episode is led by SallyAnn Delucia (ML Solutions Engineer, Arize AI), and Amber Roberts (ML Solutions Engineer, Arize AI). 

The research they discuss highlights that while LLMs have great generalization capabilities, they struggle to effectively predict and optimize communication to get the desired receiver behavior. We’ll explore whether this might be because of a lack of “behavior tokens” in LLM training corpora and how Large Content Behavior Models (LCBMs) might help to solve this issue.

Find the transcript and more here: https://arize.com/blog/large-content-and-behavior-models-paper-reading/

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Deep Papers is a podcast series featuring deep dives on today’s seminal AI papers and research. Each episode profiles the people and techniques behind cutting-edge breakthroughs in machine learning. In this paper reading, we explore the paper ‘Skeleton-of-Thought’ (SoT) approach, aimed at reducing large language model latency while enhancing answer quality.

This episode is led by Aparna Dhinakaran ( Chief Product Officer, Arize AI) and Sally-Ann Delucia (ML Solutions Engineer, Arize AI), with two of the paper authors: Xuefei Ning, Postdoctoral Researcher at Tsinghua University and Zinan Lin, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research.

SoT’s innovative methodology guides LLMs to construct answer skeletons before parallel content elaboration, achieving impressive speed-ups of up to 2.39x across 11 models. Don’t miss the opportunity to delve into this human-inspired optimization strategy and its profound implications for efficient and high-quality language generation.

Full transcript and more here: https://arize.com/blog/skeleton-of-thought-llms-can-do-parallel-decoding-paper-reading/

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