From an evolutionary perspective, languages have been the foundation of both human and technological interactions, with an interplay of vocabulary and semantics used to convey new thoughts, ideas, and notions. In the tech space, intelligent language models have emerged as a key framework in communicating and delivering new concepts, leveraging machine algorithms to accept user-provided queries and generate relevant and corresponding results.
Large language models, or LLMs, are the cornerstone of generative AI. They can perform complex tasks ranging from content generation, translation, and summarization by leveraging pre-learned information from patterns captured across large datasets of text and code. To generate this information, large language models use billions of parameters across advanced machine learning models to categorize data, answer queries, and translate text across different languages.
Not only do LLMs expand AI's capabilities across domains, but they also open up avenues for research, creativity, and productivity. They work with human languages and other forms of content, like code, protein, and molecular sequences.
The development of AI-based language models dates back to 1966, with ELIZA emerging as one of the pioneers of language models used in natural language processing (NLP) applications. Fast forward to 2023, LLMs have been trained across such vast amounts of data that they could encompass everything written on the internet for a long time. However, today's LLMs require access to much more computational resources than the language models of the past, making them more complicated and costly to develop.
So, how do these sophisticated LLMs work? With access to vast information repositories, the AI algorithm picks up words, meanings, and concepts, without specific instructions on what needs to be done in an "unsupervised manner." For example, it can learn that the word "date" has two different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. And just like someone who knows a particular language can anticipate and infer what might follow in a sentence or paragraph — or even create new words or concepts — a large language model uses the data gathered to generate and predict content.
In addition to generating content from scratch, large language models can be adapted for specific use cases using fine-tuning or prompt-tuning techniques. These techniques give the model some niche data to concentrate on, to train it for a particular application.
Recently, the NLP space has witnessed the growth of more robust language models owing to improvements in hardware capabilities, massive datasets, and significantly better training techniques, making it all the more imperative to understand how it works.
Large language models are proven to help build new search engines, tutor chatbots, compose advanced content for songs, poems, stories, and much more. However, behind even the largest and most potent LLMs is the transformer-based architecture model that can process various data sequences simultaneously.
Modern LLMs employ neural networks, known as transformers, with exhaustive parameter counts, building proficiency in data comprehension and generation of contextual responses. A language model uses deep neural networks to generate relevant outputs from underlying patterns captured from the initial training data.
Unlike RNNs (recurrent neural networks), which use repetition to understand connections between words in a sequence, transformer neural networks use self-attention to gauge how different words relate to each other. These networks add up the values of the words in a sequence, figuring out which words are most important to each other as they go.
One of the advantages of LLMs is that they capture information from unlabeled datasets in an unsupervised learning technique. This allows them to assimilate new data patterns without requiring specific data labeling, a significant breakthrough in AI model creation.
Another benefit of LLMs includes their zero-shot learning abilities, which can be further enhanced using different techniques. Some of these techniques are prompt tuning, fine-tuning, and adapters.
Custom LLMs are often the best option for applications requiring domain-specific data. They are faster, smaller, and more efficient than general-purpose LLMs. They also enable organizations to create a unique brand voice and improve their use case. An example of a custom LLM is BloombergGPT, which Bloomberg built in-house. It has 50 billion parameters and is focused on financial applications.
Several classes of large language models are suited for different types of use cases:
● Encoder only: These models can comprehend languages and perform tasks such as classification and sentiment analysis. BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is an example of an encoder-only model.
● Decoder only: These models are good at producing language and content. They can be used for tasks such as story writing. GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) is an example of a decoder-only model.
● Encoder-decoder: These models combine the encoder and decoder parts of the transformer architecture to understand and generate content. They can be used for tasks such as translation and summarization. T5 (Text-to-Text Transformer) is an example of an encoder-decoder model.
Prompt engineering involves deploying a thorough AI-engineered strategy to refine LLMs using specific prompts and suggested outputs. As generative AI capabilities advance, the significance of prompt engineering extends to building diverse content, such as RPA bots, 3D models, and other digital artifacts.
Prompt engineering incorporates a mix of logic, coding, and art to refine these existing capabilities. While the prompt itself could encompass text, images, or other newer forms of input data, much of these could yield potentially differing outcomes across various AI tools. This makes it essential to be mindful of using different modifiers to build responses across words, styles, perspectives, layout, or other desired output features.
Prompt engineering is handy in empowering teams to fine-tune LLMs and troubleshoot workflows for specific outcomes. Enterprise developers may explore this use case when refining an LLM like GPT-3 for use in a customer-facing chatbot or managing enterprise responsibilities like generating industry-specific contracts.
Even in text-to-image synthesis, prompt engineering is invaluable in finely adjusting diverse attributes of the generated output. Users can use LLMs to innovate with images characterized by distinct styles, perspectives, aspect ratios, points of view, or image resolutions. The initial prompt serves as a starting point, as subsequent requests empower users to play with specific elements, amplify others, and introduce or eliminate objects within images.
LLMs have their fair share of advantages and disadvantages for enterprises and individuals. In a real-world scenario, LLMs can generate content contextual to a particular brand or author while generating responses that could be widely presumptuous or inaccurate, which can both save and cost thousands of dollars in both instances.
While one way of mitigating this challenge is to map conversational AI-driven data to a website or relevant source on the web, achieving absolute accuracy is almost impossible due to the very nature of the model.
One way to tackle these challenges is to map the content from conversational AI to a reliable data source. However, even this process necessitates some form of human discretion to validate the content produced before it reaches the end-user. This practice is all the more critical in an enterprise setting where liability concerns could arise.
Some of the advantages of LLMs include:
● Extensibility and adaptability: Large Language Models (LLMs) can establish a robust foundation for tailoring to specific use cases. Further training layered upon an LLM can yield a finely tuned model tailored to the precise requirements of an organization.
● Flexibility: A single LLM can cater to multiple tasks and applications, spanning diverse organizations and user contexts.
● Performance: Contemporary LLMs typically exhibit high-performance characteristics, capable of swiftly generating low-latency responses.
● Accuracy: With an increase in both the number of parameters and the volume of training data, LLMs, built upon transformer models, demonstrate heightened levels of accuracy.
● Ease of training: Many LLMs use unlabeled data to expedite the training process.
However, even with these advantages, enterprises would need to combat prevalent limitations and challenges with LLMs, such as:
● Development costs: Working with LLMs typically requires substantial investments in heavy hardware like graphic processing units and extensive datasets.
● Operational costs: Beyond the developmental phase, the continuous operating expenses associated with maintaining an LLM can continue to surmount over a period of time.
● Possibility of bias: AI-trained data is usually unlabeled, creating the risk of biased content, as complete elimination of biases from available content cannot be assured.
● Explainability challenges: Justifying the rationale behind an LLM's generation of a particular content/ outcome is often intricate and not easily apparent to users.
● Underlying process complexities: Having been equipped with billions of pre-defined parameters, contemporary LLMs are complex technologies that often pose troubleshooting challenges.
As the adoption of LLMs and generative AI continues to peak, we are excited to be at the forefront of testing the boundaries of what's possible. Our advanced LLM solutions exemplify our pursuit of meaningful and purpose-driven innovation with this intelligent, sophisticated software.
For example, with Tongyi Qianwen, we help enterprises in China automate and accelerate daily tasks, whether creating real-time meeting notes, drafting business proposals, or brainstorming your next innovation. Tongyi Qianwen can help integrate speed and high performance into enterprise activities, massively reducing the need for manual intervention.
Furthermore, our extensive suite of solutions, like Machine Learning Platform for AI, AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL, OpenSearch, and EasyDispatch, help you leverage future-ready enterprise solutions integrated with advanced generative AI capabilities.
At Alibaba Cloud, we help you overcome the challenges of generative AI by providing customized solutions that leverage an extensive knowledge base. Unlike mainstream LLMs that only deal with surface-level data, our solutions can access deeper and more relevant information for your business needs. Therefore, helping you improve your service quality and timeliness without spending much on hardware.
For example, with OpenSearch, our high-performance search service we help organizations leverage hybrid search, filtering by expression, and more. Moreover, OpenSearch can reduce your storage and memory requirements by using data compression features and refined index structure design, saving you hardware costs at scale. You could combine OpenSearch with LLMs through a service tool to build an intelligent, dedicated, and real-time search service for your business, helping you generate content on the go for various purposes without much instruction or training needed.
Alibaba Cloud is your trusted partner to leverage generative AI. To get started, you can visit this page or contact us for more information.
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