61 research outputs found
Cross-Lingual Alignment of Contextual Word Embeddings, with Applications to Zero-shot Dependency Parsing
We introduce a novel method for multilingual transfer that utilizes deep
contextual embeddings, pretrained in an unsupervised fashion. While contextual
embeddings have been shown to yield richer representations of meaning compared
to their static counterparts, aligning them poses a challenge due to their
dynamic nature. To this end, we construct context-independent variants of the
original monolingual spaces and utilize their mapping to derive an alignment
for the context-dependent spaces. This mapping readily supports processing of a
target language, improving transfer by context-aware embeddings. Our
experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach for
zero-shot and few-shot learning of dependency parsing. Specifically, our method
consistently outperforms the previous state-of-the-art on 6 tested languages,
yielding an improvement of 6.8 LAS points on average.Comment: NAACL 201
How Optimal is Greedy Decoding for Extractive Question Answering?
Fine-tuned language models use greedy decoding to answer reading
comprehension questions with relative success. However, this approach does not
ensure that the answer is a span in the given passage, nor does it guarantee
that it is the most probable one. Does greedy decoding actually perform worse
than an algorithm that does adhere to these properties? To study the
performance and optimality of greedy decoding, we present exact-extract, a
decoding algorithm that efficiently finds the most probable answer span in the
context. We compare the performance of T5 with both decoding algorithms on
zero-shot and few-shot extractive question answering. When no training examples
are available, exact-extract significantly outperforms greedy decoding.
However, greedy decoding quickly converges towards the performance of
exact-extract with the introduction of a few training examples, becoming more
extractive and increasingly likelier to generate the most probable span as the
training set grows. We also show that self-supervised training can bias the
model towards extractive behavior, increasing performance in the zero-shot
setting without resorting to annotated examples. Overall, our results suggest
that pretrained language models are so good at adapting to extractive question
answering, that it is often enough to fine-tune on a small training set for the
greedy algorithm to emulate the optimal decoding strategy.Comment: AKBC 2022 12 pages, 3 figure
Generating Benchmarks for Factuality Evaluation of Language Models
Before deploying a language model (LM) within a given domain, it is important
to measure its tendency to generate factually incorrect information in that
domain. Existing factual generation evaluation methods focus on facts sampled
from the LM itself, and thus do not control the set of evaluated facts and
might under-represent rare and unlikely facts. We propose FACTOR: Factual
Assessment via Corpus TransfORmation, a scalable approach for evaluating LM
factuality. FACTOR automatically transforms a factual corpus of interest into a
benchmark evaluating an LM's propensity to generate true facts from the corpus
vs. similar but incorrect statements. We use our framework to create two
benchmarks: Wiki-FACTOR and News-FACTOR. We show that: (i) our benchmark scores
increase with model size and improve when the LM is augmented with retrieval;
(ii) benchmark score correlates with perplexity, but the two metrics do not
always agree on model ranking; and (iii) when perplexity and benchmark score
disagree, the latter better reflects factuality in open-ended generation, as
measured by human annotators. We make our data and code publicly available in
https://github.com/AI21Labs/factor
Helicobacter pylori serology in autoimmune diseases - Fact or fiction?
Background: The pathogenesis of autoimmunity is presumed to be a complex process including genetic predisposition, hormonal balance and environmental factors such as infectious agents . Helicobacter pylori , a common bacterial infectious agent has been associated with a variety of autoimmune disorders. However, this bacteria is also thought to play a protective role in the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We tested various links between anti- H. pylori (anti-HP) antibodies and a wide profile of autoimmune diseases and autoantibodies. Methods: A total of 1290 patients diagnosed with 14 different autoimmune diseases from two geographical areas (Europe and Latin America) and two groups of healthy matching controls (n = 385) were screened for the presence of H. pylori IgG antibodies by ' pylori detect ' kit. In parallel, a large profile belonging to three groups of autoantibodies was tested in all sera (anti-nuclear antibodies, autoantibodies associated with thrombophilia and gastrointestinal diseases). Results: Our data demonstrate associations between anti-HP antibodies and anti-phospholipid syndrome, giant cell arteritis, systemic sclerosis and primary biliary cirrhosis. Our data also support a previously known negative association between the prevalence of anti-HP antibodies and IBD. Additionally, links were made between seropositivity to H. pylori and the presence of anti-nuclear antibodies, dsDNA, anti-Ro and some thrombophiliaassociated antibodies, as well as negative associations with gastrointestinal-associated antibodies. Conclusions: Whether these links are epiphenomenal or H. pylori does play a causative role in the autoimmune diseases remains uncertain. The negative associations could possibly support the notion that in susceptible individuals infections may protect from the development of autoimmune diseases
Information advantage and dominant strategies in second-price auctions
We study a general model of common-value second-price auctions with differential information. We show that one of the bidders has an information advantage over the other bidders if and only if he possesses a dominant strategy. A dominant strategy is, in fact, unique, and is given by the conditional expectation of the common value with respect to his information field. Furthermore, when a bidder has information advantage, other bidders cannot make a profit
DOMINANCE SOLVABILITY OF SECOND-PRICE AUCTIONS WITH DIFFERENTIAL INFORMATION
We study a class of common-value second-price auctions with differential information. This class of common-value auctions is characterized by the property that each player’s information set is connected with respect to the common value. We show that the entire class is dominance solvable, and that there is a natural single-valued selection from the resulting set of sophisticated equilibria. Additionally, it is shown that bidder’s information advantage over others is rewarded in sophisticated equilibria
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