We develop methods, benchmarks, and training systems that turn expert data into frontier AI

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key research areas

Vision and impact

We help labs advance frontier models by working with domain experts to design and build complex, realistic datasets that drive model performance.

initiatives

Community and open science

Open benchmarks, conversations, and research for real-world AI performance.

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Open Benchmarks Grants

Backed by a $3M commitment, the program funds
open-source datasets, benchmarks, and evaluation artifacts that shape how frontier AI systems are built
and evaluated.

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Benchtalks

Our podcast series at the intersection of AI evaluation, data quality, and real-world impact.
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Reading Group

A recurring forum for researchers and practitioners to explore the latest frontier developments in AI while building meaningful connections within the community.

DEEP RESEARCH Expertise

Technical advisors and distinguished affiliates

Stephen Bach headshot

Stephen Bach

Brown University
Eliot Horowitz Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department
Jason Fries headshot

Jason Fries

Stanford University
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Data Science and of Medicine
Jared Dunnmon headshot

Jared Dunnmon

Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, Stealth Startup
Prev. Dir. of AI at DIU
Fred Sala headshot

Fred Sala

Chief Scientist
,
Snorkel AI
Assistant Professor @ University of Wisconsin-Madison
Chris Ré headshot

Chris Ré

Co-Founder
,
Snorkel AI
Professor @ Stanford University
Ludwig Schmidt headshot

Ludwig Schmidt

Stanford University · LAION
Stanford researcher and LAION collaborator
Karthik Narasimhan headshot

Karthik Narasimhan

Princeton University
Professor of Computer Science
Yu Su headshot

Yu Su

Ohio State University
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
Lewis Tunstall headshot

Lewis Tunstall

Hugging Face
Machine Learning Engineer
PUBLICATIONS

Browse research blogs
and academic papers

Type: All Types
Sort: Newest
Skill-It! A data-driven skills framework for understanding and training language models
The quality of training data impacts the performance of pre-trained large language models (LMs). Given a fixed budget of tokens, we study how to best select data that leads to good downstream model performance across tasks. We develop a new framework based on a simple hypothesis: just as humans acquire interdependent skills in a deliberate order, language models also follow a natural order when learning a set of skills from their training data. If such an order exists, it can be utilized for improved understanding of LMs and for data-efficient training. Using this intuition, our framework formalizes the notion of...
Research Paper
Skill-It! A data-driven skills framework for understanding and training language models

The quality of training data impacts the performance of pre-trained large language models (LMs). Given a fixed budget of tokens, we study how to best select data that leads to good downstream model performance across tasks. We develop a new framework based on a simple hypothesis: just as humans acquire interdependent skills in a deliberate order, language models also follow…

Oct 20, 2023

MF Chen, et al.

Learn more about Skill-It! A data-driven skills framework for understanding and training language models
Geometry Aware Adaptation for Pretrained Models
Machine learning models—including prominent zero-shot models—are often trained on datasets whose labels are only a small proportion of a larger label space. Such spaces are commonly equipped with a metric that relates the labels via distances between them. We propose a simple approach to exploit this information to adapt the trained model to reliably predict new classes—or, in the case of zero-shot prediction, to improve its performance—without any additional training. Our technique is a drop-in replacement of the standard prediction rule, swapping arg max with the Fréchet mean. We provide a comprehensive theoretical analysis for this approach, studying (i) learning-theoretic...
Research Paper
Geometry Aware Adaptation for Pretrained Models

Machine learning models—including prominent zero-shot models—are often trained on datasets whose labels are only a small proportion of a larger label space. Such spaces are commonly equipped with a metric that relates the labels via distances between them. We propose a simple approach to exploit this information to adapt the trained model to reliably predict new classes—or, in the case…

Oct 20, 2023

N. Roberts, et al.

Learn more about Geometry Aware Adaptation for Pretrained Models
Embroid: Unsupervised Prediction Smoothing Can Improve Few-Shot Classification
Recent work has shown that language models’ (LMs) prompt-based learning capabilities make them well suited for automating data labeling in domains where manual annotation is expensive. The challenge is that while writing an initial prompt is cheap, improving a prompt is costly—practitioners often require significant labeled data in order to evaluate the impact of prompt modifications. Our work asks whether it is possible to improve prompt-based learning without additional labeled data. We approach this problem by attempting to modify the predictions of a prompt, rather than the prompt itself. Our intuition is that accurate predictions should also be consistent: samples...
Research Paper
Embroid: Unsupervised Prediction Smoothing Can Improve Few-Shot Classification

Recent work has shown that language models’ (LMs) prompt-based learning capabilities make them well suited for automating data labeling in domains where manual annotation is expensive. The challenge is that while writing an initial prompt is cheap, improving a prompt is costly—practitioners often require significant labeled data in order to evaluate the impact of prompt modifications. Our work asks whether…

Oct 20, 2023

N. Guha, et al.

Learn more about Embroid: Unsupervised Prediction Smoothing Can Improve Few-Shot Classification
Resonant anomaly detection with multiple reference datasets
An important class of techniques for resonant anomaly detection in high energy physics builds models that can distinguish between reference and target datasets, where only the latter has appreciable signal. Such techniques, including Classification Without Labels (CWoLa) and Simulation Assisted Likelihood-free Anomaly Detection (SALAD) rely on a single reference dataset. They cannot take advantage of commonly-available multiple datasets and thus cannot fully exploit available information. In this work, we propose generalizations of CWoLa and SALAD for settings where multiple reference datasets are available, building on weak supervision techniques. We demonstrate improved performance in a number of settings with realistic and...
Research Paper
Resonant anomaly detection with multiple reference datasets

An important class of techniques for resonant anomaly detection in high energy physics builds models that can distinguish between reference and target datasets, where only the latter has appreciable signal. Such techniques, including Classification Without Labels (CWoLa) and Simulation Assisted Likelihood-free Anomaly Detection (SALAD) rely on a single reference dataset. They cannot take advantage of commonly-available multiple datasets and thus…

Oct 20, 2023

MF Chen, et al.

Learn more about Resonant anomaly detection with multiple reference datasets
Mitigating Source Bias for Fairer Weak Supervision
Weak supervision overcomes the label bottleneck, enabling efficient development of training sets. Millions of models trained on such datasets have been deployed in the real world and interact with users on a daily basis. However, the techniques that make weak supervision attractive—such as integrating any source of signal to estimate unknown labels—also ensure that the pseudolabels it produces are highly biased. Surprisingly, given everyday use and the potential for increased bias, weak supervision has not been studied from the point of view of fairness. This work begins such a study. Our departure point is the observation that even when a...
Research Paper
Mitigating Source Bias for Fairer Weak Supervision

Weak supervision overcomes the label bottleneck, enabling efficient development of training sets. Millions of models trained on such datasets have been deployed in the real world and interact with users on a daily basis. However, the techniques that make weak supervision attractive—such as integrating any source of signal to estimate unknown labels—also ensure that the pseudolabels it produces are highly…

Oct 20, 2023

C. Shin, et al.

Learn more about Mitigating Source Bias for Fairer Weak Supervision
Efficient representation learning for higher-order data with simplicial complexes
Graph-based machine learning is experiencing explosive growth, driven by impressive recent developments and wide applicability. Typical approaches for graph representation learning predominantly focus on pairwise interactions, while neglecting the patterns of higher-order interactions common to complex systems. This paper explores many-body interaction models, centering on simplicial complexes. From a theoretical point of view, we offer a pair of insights illustrating why higher-order models are necessary, why non-graph-based models generally cannot generalize well, while graph-based models may be able to do so. We conduct experiments on synthetic data, co-citation networks, co-authorship networks and gene-disease associations and show that simplicial complexes with...
Research Paper
Efficient representation learning for higher-order data with simplicial complexes

Graph-based machine learning is experiencing explosive growth, driven by impressive recent developments and wide applicability. Typical approaches for graph representation learning predominantly focus on pairwise interactions, while neglecting the patterns of higher-order interactions common to complex systems. This paper explores many-body interaction models, centering on simplicial complexes. From a theoretical point of view, we offer a pair of insights illustrating…

Oct 20, 2023

R. Yang, et al.

Learn more about Efficient representation learning for higher-order data with simplicial complexes
Good Data from Bad Models: Foundations of Threshold-based Auto-labeling
Creating large-scale high-quality labeled datasets is a major bottleneck in supervised machine learning workflows. Auto-labeling systems are a promising way to reduce reliance on manual labeling for dataset construction. Threshold-based auto-labeling, where validation data obtained from humans is used to find a threshold for confidence above which the data is machine-labeled, is emerging as a popular solution used widely in practice [SGT22, QCG20, SS22]. Given the long shelf-life and diverse usage of the resulting datasets, understanding when the data obtained by such auto-labeling systems can be relied on is crucial. In this work, we analyze threshold-based auto-labeling systems and derive...
Research Paper
Good Data from Bad Models: Foundations of Threshold-based Auto-labeling

Creating large-scale high-quality labeled datasets is a major bottleneck in supervised machine learning workflows. Auto-labeling systems are a promising way to reduce reliance on manual labeling for dataset construction. Threshold-based auto-labeling, where validation data obtained from humans is used to find a threshold for confidence above which the data is machine-labeled, is emerging as a popular solution used widely in…

Oct 20, 2023

H. Vishwakarma, et al.

Learn more about Good Data from Bad Models: Foundations of Threshold-based Auto-labeling
Domain Generalization with Nuclear Norm Regularization
The ability to generalize to unseen domains is crucial for machine learning systems, especially when we only have data from limited training domains and must deploy the resulting models in the real world. In this paper, we study domain generalization via the classic empirical risk minimization (ERM) approach with a simple regularizer based on the nuclear norm of the learned features from the training set. Theoretically, we provide intuitions on why nuclear norm regularization works better than ERM and ERM with L2 weight decay in linear settings. Empirically, we show that nuclear norm regularization achieves state-of-the-art average accuracy compared to...
Research Paper
Domain Generalization with Nuclear Norm Regularization

The ability to generalize to unseen domains is crucial for machine learning systems, especially when we only have data from limited training domains and must deploy the resulting models in the real world. In this paper, we study domain generalization via the classic empirical risk minimization (ERM) approach with a simple regularizer based on the nuclear norm of the learned…

Oct 20, 2023

Z. Shi, et al.

Learn more about Domain Generalization with Nuclear Norm Regularization
Automl for climate change: A call to action
The challenge that climate change poses to humanity has spurred a rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence research focused on climate change applications. The climate change AI (CCAI) community works on a diverse, challenging set of problems which often involve physics-constrained ML or heterogeneous spatiotemporal data. It would be desirable to use automated machine learning (AutoML) techniques to automatically find high-performing architectures and hyperparameters for a given dataset. In this work, we benchmark popular AutoML libraries on three high-leverage CCAI applications: climate modeling, wind power forecasting, and catalyst discovery. We find that out-of-the-box AutoML libraries currently fail to meaningfully surpass...
Research Paper
Automl for climate change: A call to action

The challenge that climate change poses to humanity has spurred a rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence research focused on climate change applications. The climate change AI (CCAI) community works on a diverse, challenging set of problems which often involve physics-constrained ML or heterogeneous spatiotemporal data. It would be desirable to use automated machine learning (AutoML) techniques to automatically find…

Oct 20, 2023

R. Tu, et al.

Learn more about Automl for climate change: A call to action
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