PEFT-Ref: A Modular Reference Architecture and Typology for Parameter-Efficient Finetuning Techniques

Recent parameter-efficient finetuning (PEFT) techniques aim to improve over the considerable cost of fully finetuning large pretrained language models (PLM). As different PEFT techniques proliferate, it is becoming difficult to compare them, in particular in terms of (i) the structure and functionality they add to the PLM, (ii) the different types and degrees of efficiency improvements achieved, (iii) performance at different downstream tasks, and (iv) how differences in structure and functionality relate to efficiency and task performance. To facilitate such comparisons, this paper presents a reference architecture which standardises aspects shared by different PEFT techniques, while isolating differences to specific locations and interactions with the standard components. Through this process of standardising and isolating differences, a modular view of PEFT techniques emerges, supporting not only direct comparison of different techniques and their efficiency and task performance, but also systematic exploration of reusability and composability of the different types of finetuned modules. We demonstrate how the reference architecture can be applied to understand properties and relative advantages of PEFT techniques, hence to inform selection of techniques for specific tasks, and design choices for new PEFT techniques

Finding common ground: towards a surface realisation shared task

In many areas of NLP reuse of utility tools such as parsers and POS taggers is now common, but this is still rare in NLG. The subfield of surface realisation has perhaps come closest, but at present we still lack a basis on which different surface realisers could be compared, chiefly because of the wide variety of different input representations used by different realisers. This paper outlines an idea for a shared task in surface realisation, where inputs are provided in a common-ground representation formalism which participants map to the types of input required by their system. These inputs are derived from existing annotated corpora developed for language analysis (parsing etc.). Outputs (realisations) are evaluated by automatic comparison against the human-authored text in the corpora as well as by human assessors

Disentangling the Properties of Human Evaluation Methods:A Classification System to Support Comparability, Meta-Evaluation and Reproducibility Testing

Current standards for designing and reporting human evaluations in NLP mean it is generally unclear which evaluations are comparable and can be expected to yield similar results when applied to the same system outputs. This has serious implications for reproducibility testing and meta-evaluation, in particular given that human evaluation is considered the gold standard against which the trustworthiness of automatic metrics is gauged. %and merging others, as well as deciding which evaluations should be able to reproduce each other’s results. Using examples from NLG, we propose a classification system for evaluations based on disentangling (i) what is being evaluated (which aspect of quality), and (ii) how it is evaluated in specific (a) evaluation modes and (b) experimental designs. We show that this approach provides a basis for determining comparability, hence for comparison of evaluations across papers, meta-evaluation experiments, reproducibility testing

A survey of recent error annotation schemes for automatically generated text

While automatically computing numerical scores remains the dominant paradigm in NLP system evaluation, error analysis is receiving increasing attention, with numerous error annotation schemes being proposed for automatically generated text. However, there is little agreement about what error annotation schemes should look like, how many different types of errors should be distinguished and at what level of granularity. In this paper, our aim is to map out recent work on annotating errors in automatically generated text, with a particular focus on error taxonomies. We describe our systematic paper selection process, and survey the error annotation schemes reported in the papers, drawing out similarities and differences between them. Finally, we characterise the issues that would make it difficult to move from the current situation to a standardised error taxonomy for annotating errors in automatically generated text

A reproduction study of an annotation-based human evaluation of MT outputs

In this paper we report our reproduction study of the Croatian part of an annotation-based human evaluation of machine-translated user reviews (Popovic, 2020). The work was carried out as part of the ReproGen Shared Task on Reproducibility of Human Evaluation in NLG. Our aim was to repeat the original study exactly, except for using a different set of evaluators. We describe the experimental design, characterise differences between original and reproduction study, and present the results from each study, along with analysis of the similarity between them. For the six main evaluation results of Major/Minor/All Comprehension error rates and Major/Minor/All Adequacy error rates, we find that (i) 4/6 system rankings are the same in both studies, (ii) the relative differences between systems are replicated well for Major Comprehension and Adequacy (Pearson's \textgreater 0.9), but not for the corresponding Minor error rates (Pearson's 0.36 for Adequacy, 0.67 for Comprehension), and (iii) the individual system scores for both types of Minor error rates had a higher degree of reproducibility than the corresponding Major error rates. We also examine inter-annotator agreement and compare the annotations obtained in the original and reproduction studies

The 2022 ReproGen Shared Task on Reproducibility of Evaluations in NLG : Overview and Results

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On reporting scores and agreement for error annotation tasks

This work examines different ways of aggregating scores for error annotation in MT outputs: raw error counts, error counts normalised over total number of words (word percentage'), and error counts normalised over total number of errors (error percentage'). We use each of these three scores to calculate inter-annotator agreement in the form of Krippendorff's alpha and Pearson's r and compare the obtained numbers, overall and separately for different types of errors. While each score has its advantages depending on the goal of the evaluation, we argue that the best way of estimating inter-annotator agreement using such numbers are raw counts. If the annotation process ensures that the total number of words cannot differ among the annotators (for example, due to adding omission symbols), normalising over number of words will lead to the same conclusions. In contrast, total number of errors is very subjective because different annotators often perceive different amount of errors in the same text, therefore normalising over this number can indicate lower agreements

How to control sentiment in text generation: a survey of the state-of-the-art in sentiment-control techniques

Recent advances in the development of large Pretrained Language Models, such as GPT, BERT and Bloom, have achieved remarkable performance on a wide range of different NLP tasks. However, when used for text generation tasks, these models still have limitations when it comes to controlling the content and style of the generated text, often producing content that is incorrect, irrelevant, or inappropriate in the context of a given task. In this survey paper, we explore methods for controllable text generation with a focus on sentiment control. We systematically collect papers from the ACL Anthology, create a categorisation scheme based on different control techniques and controlled attributes, and use the scheme to categorise and compare methods. The result is a detailed and comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art techniques for sentiment-controlled text generation categorised on the basis of how the control is implemented and what attributes are controlled and providing a clear idea of their relative strengths and weaknesses