Multilingual Reverse Instructions: Generating High-Quality Instruction Tuning Datasets for Low-Resource Languages

แนวคิดหลัก

Multilingual Reverse Instructions (MURI) is a novel method for generating high-quality instruction tuning datasets for low-resource languages without requiring human annotators, task-annotated data, or pre-trained multilingual models.

บทคัดย่อ

The paper introduces Multilingual Reverse Instructions (MURI), a novel approach for creating instruction tuning datasets for low-resource languages. MURI utilizes reverse instructions and a translation pipeline to generate instruction-output pairs from existing human-written texts in low-resource languages, ensuring cultural relevance and diversity.
The key highlights of the paper are:

MURI addresses the limitations of existing approaches to instruction tuning dataset creation, which face serious challenges for low-resource languages due to their dependence on data annotation, templatized tasks, or synthetic data generation.

The authors created MURI-IT, a dataset containing over 2 million instruction-output pairs across 200 languages, with 64% of the data from low-resource languages. This is one of the most diverse instruction tuning datasets to date.

Evaluation by native speakers across 13 languages and fine-tuning experiments with mT5 models demonstrate the effectiveness of MURI-IT for both natural language understanding and open-ended generation tasks.

The authors publicly release the MURI-IT dataset and the MURI-101 instruction-tuned mT5-XXL model, contributing to more inclusive and linguistically diverse language models.

While challenges remain, particularly in natural language generation for low-resource languages, MURI-IT represents an important step towards addressing the disparity in instruction tuning resources across languages.

สถิติ

MURI-IT contains over 2 million instruction-output pairs across 200 languages.
64% of the data in MURI-IT is from low-resource languages.
The dataset is composed of texts from Wikipedia, WikiHow, and various web-crawled pages, providing a rich variety in style, domain, and length.

คำพูด

"MURI employs the reverse instructions method proposed by Köksal et al. (2024) and combines it with machine translation to develop language-specific instructions, iτ, for a text dτ."
"MURI-IT, a dataset containing more than 2 million instruction-output pairs across 200 languages. To our knowledge, this dataset offers the broadest language coverage for multilingual instruction tuning."
"MURI-101, an mT5-XXL model instruction-tuned with MURI-IT, outperforms prior models like mT0 (Muennighoff et al., 2023) by over 14% in multilingual MMLU."

ข้อมูลเชิงลึกที่สำคัญจาก

MURI: High-Quality Instruction Tuning Datasets for Low-Resource Languages via Reverse Instructions

by Abdu... ที่ arxiv.org 09-20-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.12958.pdf

สอบถามเพิ่มเติม

How can the MURI approach be further improved to enhance the quality and diversity of the generated instruction-output pairs?

The MURI approach can be enhanced in several ways to improve the quality and diversity of the generated instruction-output pairs. First, implementing a more robust content screening process could help eliminate not only inappropriate content but also extraneous elements such as headers, footers, and advertisements that may detract from the quality of the outputs. This could involve using advanced natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify and filter out such noise more effectively.
Second, incorporating clustering techniques during the data selection phase could enhance the diversity of the instruction-output pairs. By grouping similar documents and ensuring a wider variety of topics and styles, the dataset could better represent the linguistic and cultural nuances of low-resource languages. This would also help mitigate the risk of over-representation of certain themes or styles that may not be reflective of the broader linguistic community.
Third, expanding the range of source corpora beyond Wikipedia and CulturaX to include more diverse and culturally relevant texts could further enrich the dataset. This could involve sourcing texts from local literature, news articles, and community-generated content, which would not only enhance the cultural relevance of the outputs but also ensure that the generated instructions are more idiomatic and contextually appropriate.
Finally, engaging native speakers in the instruction generation process could provide valuable insights into the nuances of language use, ensuring that the generated instructions are not only grammatically correct but also culturally resonant. This could be achieved through a participatory approach where native speakers review and refine the generated instructions, thereby enhancing the overall quality of the MURI-IT dataset.

What are the potential limitations or biases that may arise from the use of existing multilingual corpora as the source for MURI-IT, and how can these be addressed?

The use of existing multilingual corpora as the source for MURI-IT presents several potential limitations and biases. One significant concern is the presence of "translationese," which refers to the unnatural language patterns that can emerge from direct translations. This can lead to outputs that lack idiomaticity and cultural relevance, ultimately affecting the quality of the instruction-output pairs. To address this, the MURI approach could incorporate a more nuanced translation process that emphasizes cultural context and idiomatic expressions, possibly by utilizing advanced machine translation models trained specifically on diverse linguistic datasets.
Another limitation is the potential bias inherent in the source corpora themselves. For instance, if the majority of the texts are sourced from specific domains (e.g., academic or technical writing), the generated instructions may reflect a narrow perspective that does not encompass the full range of language use in everyday contexts. To mitigate this bias, it would be beneficial to diversify the sources of the corpora, ensuring representation from various domains, including informal and conversational texts, which can provide a more holistic view of language use.
Additionally, the reliance on existing corpora may inadvertently perpetuate existing biases present in those texts, such as gender, racial, or cultural biases. To counteract this, a thorough bias analysis should be conducted on the source corpora, and steps should be taken to balance the representation of different groups and perspectives in the generated dataset. This could involve actively seeking out underrepresented voices and ensuring that the instruction-output pairs reflect a more equitable representation of the linguistic community.

How can the MURI-IT dataset be leveraged to develop more inclusive and equitable language models that better serve low-resource language communities?

The MURI-IT dataset can be leveraged to develop more inclusive and equitable language models in several impactful ways. First, by providing a rich resource of instruction-output pairs across 200 languages, MURI-IT enables the training of multilingual models that can understand and generate text in low-resource languages. This can significantly enhance the accessibility of language technologies for speakers of these languages, who have historically been underserved in the NLP landscape.
Second, the dataset's emphasis on cultural relevance and idiomaticity ensures that the language models trained on MURI-IT are not only linguistically accurate but also culturally sensitive. This is crucial for applications such as chatbots, virtual assistants, and educational tools, where understanding cultural context can greatly enhance user experience and engagement. By incorporating culturally relevant content, these models can better resonate with users from diverse backgrounds, fostering a sense of inclusivity.
Moreover, the MURI-IT dataset can serve as a foundation for community-driven language model development. By involving local communities in the training and evaluation processes, developers can ensure that the models reflect the unique linguistic characteristics and cultural nuances of the target languages. This participatory approach can empower local language speakers, giving them a voice in the development of technologies that affect their lives.
Finally, the insights gained from evaluating the MURI-IT dataset can inform best practices for future multilingual dataset creation, promoting a more equitable approach to language model development. By sharing findings related to the challenges and successes of using MURI-IT, researchers and practitioners can contribute to a growing body of knowledge that prioritizes inclusivity and equity in NLP, ultimately leading to more effective and representative language technologies for low-resource language communities.