Researchers from Cornell University developed a technique called 'contextual document embeddings' to improve the performance of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, enhancing the retrieval of relevant documents by making embedding models more context-aware.
Standard methods like bi-encoders often fail to account for context-specific details, leading to poor performance in application-specific datasets. Contextual document embeddings address this by enhancing the sensitivity of the embedding model to subtle differences in documents, particularly in specialized domains.
The researchers proposed two complementary methods to improve bi-encoders:
- Modifying the training process using contrastive learning to distinguish between similar documents.
- Modifying the bi-encoder architecture to incorporate corpus context during the embedding process.
These modifications allow the model to capture both the general context and specific details of documents, leading to better performance, especially in out-of-domain scenarios. The new technique has shown consistent improvements over standard bi-encoders and can be adapted for various applications beyond text-based models.
Standard methods like bi-encoders often fail to account for context-specific details, leading to poor performance in application-specific datasets. Contextual document embeddings address this by enhancing the sensitivity of the embedding model to subtle differences in documents, particularly in specialized domains.
The researchers proposed two complementary methods to improve bi-encoders:
- Modifying the training process using contrastive learning to distinguish between similar documents.
- Modifying the bi-encoder architecture to incorporate corpus context during the embedding process.
These modifications allow the model to capture both the general context and specific details of documents, leading to better performance, especially in out-of-domain scenarios. The new technique has shown consistent improvements over standard bi-encoders and can be adapted for various applications beyond text-based models.
Alibaba Cloud has developed a new tool called TAAT that analyzes log file timestamps to improve server fault prediction and detection. The tool, which combines machine learning with timestamp analysis, saw a 10% improvement in fault prediction accuracy.
This article explains BERT, a language model designed to understand text rather than generate it. It discusses the transformer architecture BERT is based on and provides a step-by-step guide to building and training a BERT model for sentiment analysis.
This repository showcases various advanced techniques for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems. RAG systems combine information retrieval with generative models to provide accurate and contextually rich responses.
This article provides a comparative analysis of popular embedding libraries for generative AI, evaluating their strengths, limitations, and suitability for different use cases.
A Github Gist containing a Python script for text classification using the TxTail API
This tutorial covers fine-tuning BERT for sentiment analysis using Hugging Face Transformers. Learn to prepare data, set up environment, train and evaluate the model, and make predictions.
This article is part of a series titled ‘LLMs from Scratch’, a complete guide to understanding and building Large Language Models (LLMs). In this article, we discuss the self-attention mechanism and how it is used by transformers to create rich and context-aware transformer embeddings.
The Self-Attention mechanism is used to add context to learned embeddings, which are vectors representing each word in the input sequence. The process involves the following steps:
1. Learned Embeddings: These are the initial vector representations of words, learned during the training phase. The weights matrix, storing the learned embeddings, is stored in the first linear layer of the Transformer architecture.
2. Positional Encoding: This step adds positional information to the learned embeddings. Positional information helps the model understand the order of the words in the input sequence, as transformers process all words in parallel, and without this information, they would lose the order of the words.
3. Self-Attention: The core of the Self-Attention mechanism is to update the learned embeddings with context from the surrounding words in the input sequence. This mechanism determines which words provide context to other words, and this contextual information is used to produce the final contextualized embeddings.
The Self-Attention mechanism is used to add context to learned embeddings, which are vectors representing each word in the input sequence. The process involves the following steps:
1. Learned Embeddings: These are the initial vector representations of words, learned during the training phase. The weights matrix, storing the learned embeddings, is stored in the first linear layer of the Transformer architecture.
2. Positional Encoding: This step adds positional information to the learned embeddings. Positional information helps the model understand the order of the words in the input sequence, as transformers process all words in parallel, and without this information, they would lose the order of the words.
3. Self-Attention: The core of the Self-Attention mechanism is to update the learned embeddings with context from the surrounding words in the input sequence. This mechanism determines which words provide context to other words, and this contextual information is used to produce the final contextualized embeddings.
In this article, we will explore various aspects of BERT, including the landscape at the time of its creation, a detailed breakdown of the model architecture, and writing a task-agnostic fine-tuning pipeline, which we demonstrated using sentiment analysis. Despite being one of the earliest LLMs, BERT has remained relevant even today, and continues to find applications in both research and industry.
This article explains how to use the Sentence Transformers library to finetune and train embedding models for a variety of applications, such as retrieval augmented generation, semantic search, and semantic textual similarity. It covers the training components, dataset format, loss function, training arguments, evaluators, and trainer.
