Shahul Es, creator of the Ragas Project and evaluation expert, discusses open source model evaluation, including debugging, troubleshooting, and benchmark challenges. They highlight the importance of custom data distributions and fine-tuning for better model performance. They also explore the difficulties of evaluating LLM applications and the need for reliable leaderboards. Additionally, they discuss the security aspects of language models and the significance of data preparation and filtering. Lastly, they contrast fine-tuning with retrieval augmented generation and provide resources for evaluating LLM applications.
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Quick takeaways
Evaluation of language models (LLMs) is crucial for identifying areas for improvement and enhancing performance, but there are challenges such as biased leaderboards, lack of correlation with human judgement, and poor evaluation across different data distributions.
To effectively evaluate LLMs, it is important to define specific dimensions that matter in a given application and create custom evaluation metrics tailored to the use case, while understanding the different purposes of fine-tuning (improving specific aspects) and retrieval augmented generations (injecting new factual information).
Deep dives
Evaluation as a Measure of Performance
Evaluation is the process of measuring and quantifying the performance of a system, including language models (LLMs). By evaluating a system, one can identify areas for improvement and make iterative changes to enhance its performance.
Challenges with Model Evaluation
The reliance on open LLM leaderboards can be unreliable and potentially biased, as models may optimize for specific data sets rather than being generally useful. Evaluation metrics may also lack correlation with human judgement, particularly in complex tasks such as summarization. Overfitting to test sets and poor evaluation across different data distributions present further challenges in model evaluation.
The Importance of Custom Evaluation Metrics
To evaluate LLMs effectively, it is crucial to define specific dimensions or aspects that matter in a given application. These dimensions can be quantified using methods such as string matching or even using LLMs themselves to evaluate other LLMs. Creating custom evaluation metrics tailored to the specific use case can provide more accurate and relevant insights.
The Role of Fine-Tuning and RAGs
Fine-tuning and retrieval augmented generations (RAGs) serve different purposes in LLM applications. While fine-tuning allows models to think in a certain way and follow specific instructions, RAGs are better suited for cases where injecting new factual information is necessary. Fine-tuning can be useful when models need to improve performance in specific aspects, but it should not be used to introduce new facts to the model. RAGs, on the other hand, enable models to generate outputs based on contextual information.
MLOps Coffee Sessions #179 with Shahul Es, All About Evaluating LLM Applications.
// Abstract
Shahul Es, renowned for his expertise in the evaluation space and the creator of the Ragas Project. Shahul dives deep into the world of evaluation in open source models, sharing insights on debugging, troubleshooting, and the challenges faced when it comes to benchmarks. From the importance of custom data distributions to the role of fine-tuning in enhancing model performance, this episode is packed with valuable information for anyone interested in language models and AI.
// Bio
Shahul is a data science professional with 6+ years of expertise and has worked in data domains from structured, NLP to Audio processing. He is also a Kaggle GrandMaster and code owner/ ML of the Open-Assistant initiative that released some of the best open-source alternatives to ChatGPT.
// MLOps Jobs board
https://mlops.pallet.xyz/jobs
// MLOps Swag/Merch
https://mlops-community.myshopify.com/
// Related Links
All about evaluating Large language models blog: https://explodinggradients.com/all-about-evaluating-large-language-models
Ragas: https://github.com/explodinggradients/ragas
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Timestamps:
[00:00] Shahul's preferred coffee
[00:20] Takeaways
[01:46] Please like, share, and subscribe to our MLOps channels!
[02:07] Shahul's definition of Evaluation
[03:27] Evaluation metrics and Benchmarks
[05:46] Gamed leaderboards
[10:13] Best at summarizing long text open-source models
[11:12] Benchmarks
[14:20] Recommending evaluation process
[17:43] LLMs for other LLMs
[20:40] Debugging failed evaluation models
[24:25] Prompt injection
[27:32] Alignment
[32:45] Open Assist
[35:51] Garbage in, garbage out
[37:00] Ragas
[42:52] Valuable use case besides Open AI
[45:11] Fine-tuning LLMs
[49:07] Connect with Shahul if you need help with Ragas @Shahules786 on Twitter
[49:58] Wrap up
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