The Impact of Demonstrations on Multilingual In-Context Learning: A Multidimensional Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Zhang, Miaoran, Gautam, Vagrant, Wang, Mingyang, Alabi, Jesujoba O., Shen, Xiaoyu, Klakow, Dietrich, Mosbach, Marius
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Zhang, Miaoran
Gautam, Vagrant
Wang, Mingyang
Alabi, Jesujoba O.
Shen, Xiaoyu
Klakow, Dietrich
Mosbach, Marius
author_facet Zhang, Miaoran
Gautam, Vagrant
Wang, Mingyang
Alabi, Jesujoba O.
Shen, Xiaoyu
Klakow, Dietrich
Mosbach, Marius
contents In-context learning is a popular inference strategy where large language models solve a task using only a few labeled demonstrations without needing any parameter updates. Although there have been extensive studies on English in-context learning, multilingual in-context learning remains under-explored, and we lack an in-depth understanding of the role of demonstrations in this context. To address this gap, we conduct a multidimensional analysis of multilingual in-context learning, experimenting with 5 models from different model families, 9 datasets covering classification and generation tasks, and 56 typologically diverse languages. Our results reveal that the effectiveness of demonstrations varies significantly across models, tasks, and languages. We also find that strong instruction-following models including Llama 2-Chat, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4 are largely insensitive to the quality of demonstrations. Instead, a carefully crafted template often eliminates the benefits of demonstrations for some tasks and languages altogether. These findings show that the importance of demonstrations might be overestimated. Our work highlights the need for granular evaluation across multiple axes towards a better understanding of in-context learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_12976
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Impact of Demonstrations on Multilingual In-Context Learning: A Multidimensional Analysis
Zhang, Miaoran
Gautam, Vagrant
Wang, Mingyang
Alabi, Jesujoba O.
Shen, Xiaoyu
Klakow, Dietrich
Mosbach, Marius
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
In-context learning is a popular inference strategy where large language models solve a task using only a few labeled demonstrations without needing any parameter updates. Although there have been extensive studies on English in-context learning, multilingual in-context learning remains under-explored, and we lack an in-depth understanding of the role of demonstrations in this context. To address this gap, we conduct a multidimensional analysis of multilingual in-context learning, experimenting with 5 models from different model families, 9 datasets covering classification and generation tasks, and 56 typologically diverse languages. Our results reveal that the effectiveness of demonstrations varies significantly across models, tasks, and languages. We also find that strong instruction-following models including Llama 2-Chat, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4 are largely insensitive to the quality of demonstrations. Instead, a carefully crafted template often eliminates the benefits of demonstrations for some tasks and languages altogether. These findings show that the importance of demonstrations might be overestimated. Our work highlights the need for granular evaluation across multiple axes towards a better understanding of in-context learning.
title The Impact of Demonstrations on Multilingual In-Context Learning: A Multidimensional Analysis
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.12976