Benchmarking Multimodal Foundation Models on Isomorphic Representations

Core Concepts

Multimodal foundation models exhibit a consistent preference towards textual representations over visual representations when solving the same problems, in contrast with known human preferences.

Abstract

The paper introduces IsoBench, a benchmark dataset for evaluating multimodal foundation models on problems with isomorphic representations (i.e., the same problem presented in different modalities such as text, images, and mathematical expressions). The key findings are:

Across various multimodal foundation models, including GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini, the models perform substantially better on text-only prompts compared to image-based prompts, even when the information content is the same. This is in contrast with the known human preference for visual representations over textual ones.

The performance gap between text and image representations can be as large as 28.7 percentage points, suggesting that the multimodal fusion components of these models may not be fully leveraging the visual information.

The paper introduces two prompting techniques, IsoCombination and IsoScratchPad, which can improve model performance by considering combinations of, and translations between, different input representations. These techniques help bridge the performance gap between text and image inputs in certain settings.

IsoBench covers a broad range of domains, including mathematics, science, algorithms, and chess, with each example provided in multiple isomorphic representations. This allows for fine-grained diagnosis of model capabilities and limitations across different input modalities.

Stats

On the mathematics problems, GPT-4 Turbo performs 29.7 points worse when provided with images instead of text.
On the science problems, Claude-3 Opus performs 18.7 points worse when provided with images instead of text.
On the graph algorithm problems, GPT-4 Turbo performs 19.3 points worse on graph connectivity when provided with images instead of text.

Quotes

"Across various foundation models, we observe that on the same problem, models have a consistent preference towards textual representations."
"Most prominently, when evaluated on all IsoBench problems, Claude-3 Opus performs 28.7 points worse when provided with images instead of text; similarly, GPT-4 Turbo is 18.7 points worse and Gemini Pro is 14.9 points worse."

Key Insights Distilled From

IsoBench

by Deqing Fu,Gh... at arxiv.org 04-02-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.01266.pdf

Deeper Inquiries

How do the performance gaps between text and image representations vary across different types of problems (e.g., reasoning vs. factual questions)?

The performance gaps between text and image representations vary significantly across different types of problems within the context of multimodal foundation models. In the study conducted using IsoBench, it was observed that models consistently performed better on text-only prompts compared to image-based prompts. This preference for textual representations was evident across various domains such as mathematical functions, algorithmic problems, science questions, and chess games.
In terms of specific problem types, the performance gaps were more pronounced in tasks that required detailed visual analysis, such as counting items or comparing numbers visually. For instance, problems involving enumeration of objects like breakpoints and chemistry questions showed significant performance degradation with image-based prompts. On the other hand, tasks that involved reasoning, such as graph connectivity and maximum flow problems, also exhibited notable performance differences between text and image representations.
Overall, the performance gaps between text and image representations were more prominent in tasks that necessitated precise visual understanding or detailed analysis, highlighting the challenges faced by multimodal models in effectively leveraging visual information for complex reasoning tasks.

How can the architectural changes or training techniques help multimodal foundation models better leverage visual information and overcome their preference for textual inputs?

To help multimodal foundation models better leverage visual information and overcome their preference for textual inputs, several architectural changes and training techniques can be considered:

Early Fusion Techniques: Implementing early fusion methods that integrate visual and textual features at the input level can enhance the model's ability to combine information from both modalities effectively.

Fine-tuning Vision Encoders: Fine-tuning the vision encoders to extract more detailed and relevant visual features can improve the model's understanding of images and enhance its performance on tasks that require visual analysis.

Cross-Modal Attention Mechanisms: Incorporating cross-modal attention mechanisms that enable the model to attend to relevant parts of the visual input while processing textual information can facilitate better integration of visual and textual cues.

Data Augmentation: Augmenting the training data with a diverse set of visual examples and textual prompts can help the model learn to generalize better across different modalities and improve its performance on a wide range of tasks.

Multi-Task Learning: Training the model on multiple tasks that involve both visual and textual inputs can encourage it to learn robust representations that effectively combine information from different modalities.

By implementing these architectural changes and training techniques, multimodal foundation models can enhance their ability to leverage visual information and achieve a more balanced performance across text and image representations.

Given the observed biases towards textual representations, how can these models be effectively deployed in real-world applications that require seamless integration of both visual and textual inputs?

Despite the biases towards textual representations observed in multimodal foundation models, there are several strategies to effectively deploy these models in real-world applications that demand seamless integration of both visual and textual inputs:

Hybrid Input Representations: Utilize a hybrid input representation approach that combines textual and visual information in a complementary manner. By designing prompts that incorporate both modalities effectively, models can leverage the strengths of each input type for improved performance.

Fine-Tuning on Diverse Data: Fine-tune the models on diverse datasets that contain a mix of visual and textual inputs. This training strategy can help the models adapt to different modalities and improve their ability to process and reason across multiple types of data.

Ensemble Models: Employ ensemble models that consist of multiple sub-models specialized in processing either textual or visual inputs. By combining the outputs of these sub-models, the ensemble model can provide more robust and accurate predictions that leverage the strengths of each modality.

Feedback Mechanisms: Implement feedback mechanisms that allow users to provide corrections or additional information based on the model's outputs. This feedback loop can help the model learn from its mistakes and improve its performance over time, especially in scenarios where visual information is crucial.

Domain-Specific Training: Train the models on domain-specific tasks that require a seamless integration of visual and textual inputs. By focusing on specific application areas, the models can learn to effectively combine information from both modalities to solve complex real-world problems.

By adopting these strategies, multimodal foundation models can be effectively deployed in real-world applications that necessitate the seamless integration of both visual and textual inputs, enabling them to perform optimally across a wide range of tasks and domains.