BoolQuestions: Does Dense Retrieval Understand Boolean Logic in Language?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Zongmeng, Zhu, Jinhua, Zhou, Wengang, Qi, Xiang, Zhang, Peng, Li, Houqiang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Zhang, Zongmeng
Zhu, Jinhua
Zhou, Wengang
Qi, Xiang
Zhang, Peng
Li, Houqiang
author_facet Zhang, Zongmeng
Zhu, Jinhua
Zhou, Wengang
Qi, Xiang
Zhang, Peng
Li, Houqiang
contents Dense retrieval, which aims to encode the semantic information of arbitrary text into dense vector representations or embeddings, has emerged as an effective and efficient paradigm for text retrieval, consequently becoming an essential component in various natural language processing systems. These systems typically focus on optimizing the embedding space by attending to the relevance of text pairs, while overlooking the Boolean logic inherent in language, which may not be captured by current training objectives. In this work, we first investigate whether current retrieval systems can comprehend the Boolean logic implied in language. To answer this question, we formulate the task of Boolean Dense Retrieval and collect a benchmark dataset, BoolQuestions, which covers complex queries containing basic Boolean logic and corresponding annotated passages. Through extensive experimental results on the proposed task and benchmark dataset, we draw the conclusion that current dense retrieval systems do not fully understand Boolean logic in language, and there is a long way to go to improve our dense retrieval systems. Furthermore, to promote further research on enhancing the understanding of Boolean logic for language models, we explore Boolean operation on decomposed query and propose a contrastive continual training method that serves as a strong baseline for the research community.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_12235
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BoolQuestions: Does Dense Retrieval Understand Boolean Logic in Language?
Zhang, Zongmeng
Zhu, Jinhua
Zhou, Wengang
Qi, Xiang
Zhang, Peng
Li, Houqiang
Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
Dense retrieval, which aims to encode the semantic information of arbitrary text into dense vector representations or embeddings, has emerged as an effective and efficient paradigm for text retrieval, consequently becoming an essential component in various natural language processing systems. These systems typically focus on optimizing the embedding space by attending to the relevance of text pairs, while overlooking the Boolean logic inherent in language, which may not be captured by current training objectives. In this work, we first investigate whether current retrieval systems can comprehend the Boolean logic implied in language. To answer this question, we formulate the task of Boolean Dense Retrieval and collect a benchmark dataset, BoolQuestions, which covers complex queries containing basic Boolean logic and corresponding annotated passages. Through extensive experimental results on the proposed task and benchmark dataset, we draw the conclusion that current dense retrieval systems do not fully understand Boolean logic in language, and there is a long way to go to improve our dense retrieval systems. Furthermore, to promote further research on enhancing the understanding of Boolean logic for language models, we explore Boolean operation on decomposed query and propose a contrastive continual training method that serves as a strong baseline for the research community.
title BoolQuestions: Does Dense Retrieval Understand Boolean Logic in Language?
topic Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.12235