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Main Authors: Makino, Kohei, Miwa, Makoto, Sasaki, Yutaka
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.03790
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author Makino, Kohei
Miwa, Makoto
Sasaki, Yutaka
author_facet Makino, Kohei
Miwa, Makoto
Sasaki, Yutaka
contents This paper addresses a crucial challenge in retrieval-augmented generation-based relation extractors; the end-to-end training is not applicable to conventional retrieval-augmented generation due to the non-differentiable nature of instance retrieval. This problem prevents the instance retrievers from being optimized for the relation extraction task, and conventionally it must be trained with an objective different from that for relation extraction. To address this issue, we propose a novel End-to-end Trainable Retrieval-Augmented Generation (ETRAG), which allows end-to-end optimization of the entire model, including the retriever, for the relation extraction objective by utilizing a differentiable selection of the $k$ nearest instances. We evaluate the relation extraction performance of ETRAG on the TACRED dataset, which is a standard benchmark for relation extraction. ETRAG demonstrates consistent improvements against the baseline model as retrieved instances are added. Furthermore, the analysis of instances retrieved by the end-to-end trained retriever confirms that the retrieved instances contain common relation labels or entities with the query and are specialized for the target task. Our findings provide a promising foundation for future research on retrieval-augmented generation and the broader applications of text generation in Natural Language Processing.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_03790
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle End-to-End Trainable Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Relation Extraction
Makino, Kohei
Miwa, Makoto
Sasaki, Yutaka
Computation and Language
This paper addresses a crucial challenge in retrieval-augmented generation-based relation extractors; the end-to-end training is not applicable to conventional retrieval-augmented generation due to the non-differentiable nature of instance retrieval. This problem prevents the instance retrievers from being optimized for the relation extraction task, and conventionally it must be trained with an objective different from that for relation extraction. To address this issue, we propose a novel End-to-end Trainable Retrieval-Augmented Generation (ETRAG), which allows end-to-end optimization of the entire model, including the retriever, for the relation extraction objective by utilizing a differentiable selection of the $k$ nearest instances. We evaluate the relation extraction performance of ETRAG on the TACRED dataset, which is a standard benchmark for relation extraction. ETRAG demonstrates consistent improvements against the baseline model as retrieved instances are added. Furthermore, the analysis of instances retrieved by the end-to-end trained retriever confirms that the retrieved instances contain common relation labels or entities with the query and are specialized for the target task. Our findings provide a promising foundation for future research on retrieval-augmented generation and the broader applications of text generation in Natural Language Processing.
title End-to-End Trainable Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Relation Extraction
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.03790