Are Small Language Models Ready to Compete with Large Language Models for Practical Applications?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sinha, Neelabh, Jain, Vinija, Chadha, Aman
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Sinha, Neelabh
Jain, Vinija
Chadha, Aman
author_facet Sinha, Neelabh
Jain, Vinija
Chadha, Aman
contents The rapid rise of Language Models (LMs) has expanded their use in several applications. Yet, due to constraints of model size, associated cost, or proprietary restrictions, utilizing state-of-the-art (SOTA) LLMs is not always feasible. With open, smaller LMs emerging, more applications can leverage their capabilities, but selecting the right LM can be challenging as smaller LMs do not perform well universally. This work tries to bridge this gap by proposing a framework to experimentally evaluate small, open LMs in practical settings through measuring semantic correctness of outputs across three practical aspects: task types, application domains, and reasoning types, using diverse prompt styles. It also conducts an in-depth comparison of 10 small, open LMs to identify the best LM and prompt style depending on specific application requirements using the proposed framework. We also show that if selected appropriately, they can outperform SOTA LLMs like DeepSeek-v2, GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, Gemini-1.5-Pro, and even compete with GPT-4o.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_11402
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Are Small Language Models Ready to Compete with Large Language Models for Practical Applications?
Sinha, Neelabh
Jain, Vinija
Chadha, Aman
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
The rapid rise of Language Models (LMs) has expanded their use in several applications. Yet, due to constraints of model size, associated cost, or proprietary restrictions, utilizing state-of-the-art (SOTA) LLMs is not always feasible. With open, smaller LMs emerging, more applications can leverage their capabilities, but selecting the right LM can be challenging as smaller LMs do not perform well universally. This work tries to bridge this gap by proposing a framework to experimentally evaluate small, open LMs in practical settings through measuring semantic correctness of outputs across three practical aspects: task types, application domains, and reasoning types, using diverse prompt styles. It also conducts an in-depth comparison of 10 small, open LMs to identify the best LM and prompt style depending on specific application requirements using the proposed framework. We also show that if selected appropriately, they can outperform SOTA LLMs like DeepSeek-v2, GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, Gemini-1.5-Pro, and even compete with GPT-4o.
title Are Small Language Models Ready to Compete with Large Language Models for Practical Applications?
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.11402