Small Language Models in the Real World: Insights from Industrial Text Classification

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Li, Lujun, Sleem, Lama, Gentile, Niccolo', Nichil, Geoffrey, State, Radu
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866908418226257920
author Li, Lujun
Sleem, Lama
Gentile, Niccolo'
Nichil, Geoffrey
State, Radu
author_facet Li, Lujun
Sleem, Lama
Gentile, Niccolo'
Nichil, Geoffrey
State, Radu
contents With the emergence of ChatGPT, Transformer models have significantly advanced text classification and related tasks. Decoder-only models such as Llama exhibit strong performance and flexibility, yet they suffer from inefficiency on inference due to token-by-token generation, and their effectiveness in text classification tasks heavily depends on prompt quality. Moreover, their substantial GPU resource requirements often limit widespread adoption. Thus, the question of whether smaller language models are capable of effectively handling text classification tasks emerges as a topic of significant interest. However, the selection of appropriate models and methodologies remains largely underexplored. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of prompt engineering and supervised fine-tuning methods for transformer-based text classification. Specifically, we focus on practical industrial scenarios, including email classification, legal document categorization, and the classification of extremely long academic texts. We examine the strengths and limitations of smaller models, with particular attention to both their performance and their efficiency in Video Random-Access Memory (VRAM) utilization, thereby providing valuable insights for the local deployment and application of compact models in industrial settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_16078
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Small Language Models in the Real World: Insights from Industrial Text Classification
Li, Lujun
Sleem, Lama
Gentile, Niccolo'
Nichil, Geoffrey
State, Radu
Computation and Language
With the emergence of ChatGPT, Transformer models have significantly advanced text classification and related tasks. Decoder-only models such as Llama exhibit strong performance and flexibility, yet they suffer from inefficiency on inference due to token-by-token generation, and their effectiveness in text classification tasks heavily depends on prompt quality. Moreover, their substantial GPU resource requirements often limit widespread adoption. Thus, the question of whether smaller language models are capable of effectively handling text classification tasks emerges as a topic of significant interest. However, the selection of appropriate models and methodologies remains largely underexplored. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of prompt engineering and supervised fine-tuning methods for transformer-based text classification. Specifically, we focus on practical industrial scenarios, including email classification, legal document categorization, and the classification of extremely long academic texts. We examine the strengths and limitations of smaller models, with particular attention to both their performance and their efficiency in Video Random-Access Memory (VRAM) utilization, thereby providing valuable insights for the local deployment and application of compact models in industrial settings.
title Small Language Models in the Real World: Insights from Industrial Text Classification
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.16078