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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

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Product Manifold Representations for Learning on Biological Pathways
Machine learning models that embed graphs in non-Euclidean spaces have shown substantial benefits in a variety of contexts, but their application has not been studied extensively in the biological domain, particularly with respect to biological pathway graphs. Such graphs exhibit a variety of complex network structures, presenting challenges to existing embedding approaches. Learning high-quality embeddings for biological pathway graphs is important for researchers looking to understand the underpinnings of disease and train high-quality predictive models on these networks. In this work, we investigate the effects of embedding pathway graphs in nonEuclidean mixed-curvature spaces and compare against traditional Euclidean graph representation...
Research Paper
Product Manifold Representations for Learning on Biological Pathways

Machine learning models that embed graphs in non-Euclidean spaces have shown substantial benefits in a variety of contexts, but their application has not been studied extensively in the biological domain, particularly with respect to biological pathway graphs. Such graphs exhibit a variety of complex network structures, presenting challenges to existing embedding approaches. Learning high-quality embeddings for biological pathway graphs is…

Sep 18, 2024

D. McNeela, et al.

Learn more about Product Manifold Representations for Learning on Biological Pathways
Pretrained Hybrids with MAD Skills
While Transformers underpin modern large language models (LMs), there is a growing list of alternative architectures with new capabilities, promises, and tradeoffs. This makes choosing the right LM architecture challenging. Recently-proposed hybrid architectures seek a best-of-all-worlds approach that reaps the benefits of all architectures. Hybrid design is difficult for two reasons: it requires manual expert-driven search, and new hybrids must be trained from scratch. We propose Manticore, 1 a framework that addresses these challenges. Manticore automates the design of hybrid architectures while reusing pretrained models to create pretrained hybrids. Our approach augments ideas from differentiable Neural Architecture Search (NAS) by...
Research Paper
Pretrained Hybrids with MAD Skills

While Transformers underpin modern large language models (LMs), there is a growing list of alternative architectures with new capabilities, promises, and tradeoffs. This makes choosing the right LM architecture challenging. Recently-proposed hybrid architectures seek a best-of-all-worlds approach that reaps the benefits of all architectures. Hybrid design is difficult for two reasons: it requires manual expert-driven search, and new hybrids must…

Sep 18, 2024

N. Roberts, et al.

Learn more about Pretrained Hybrids with MAD Skills
Preference Tuning For Toxicity Mitigation Generalizes Across Languages
Detoxifying multilingual Large Language Models (LLMs) has become crucial due to their increasing global use. In this work, we explore zero-shot cross-lingual generalization of preference tuning in detoxifying LLMs. In contrast to prior work that suggests limited crosslingual generalization for other safety tasks, we show that Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) training with only English data can significantly reduce toxicity in multilingual openended generations. For instance, the probability of mGPT-1.3B in generating toxic continuations drops from 46.8% to 3.9% across 17 different languages after training. Our results also generalize to other multilingual LLMs, such as BLOOM, Llama3, and Aya-23. Using mechanistic...
Research Paper
Preference Tuning For Toxicity Mitigation Generalizes Across Languages

Detoxifying multilingual Large Language Models (LLMs) has become crucial due to their increasing global use. In this work, we explore zero-shot cross-lingual generalization of preference tuning in detoxifying LLMs. In contrast to prior work that suggests limited crosslingual generalization for other safety tasks, we show that Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) training with only English data can significantly reduce toxicity in…

Sep 18, 2024

X. Li, et al.

Learn more about Preference Tuning For Toxicity Mitigation Generalizes Across Languages
Planetarium: A Rigorous Benchmark for Translating Text to Structured Planning Languages
Many recent works have explored using language models for planning problems. One line of research focuses on translating natural language descriptions of planning tasks into structured planning languages, such as the planning domain definition language (PDDL). While this approach is promising, accurately measuring the quality of generated PDDL code continues to pose significant challenges. First, generated PDDL code is typically evaluated using planning validators that check whether the problem can be solved with a planner. This method is insufficient because a language model might generate valid PDDL code that does not align with the natural language description of the task....
Research Paper
Planetarium: A Rigorous Benchmark for Translating Text to Structured Planning Languages

Many recent works have explored using language models for planning problems. One line of research focuses on translating natural language descriptions of planning tasks into structured planning languages, such as the planning domain definition language (PDDL). While this approach is promising, accurately measuring the quality of generated PDDL code continues to pose significant challenges. First, generated PDDL code is typically…

Sep 18, 2024

M. Zuo, et al.

Learn more about Planetarium: A Rigorous Benchmark for Translating Text to Structured Planning Languages
Pearls from Pebbles: Improved Confidence Functions for Auto-labeling
Auto-labeling is an important family of techniques that produce labeled training sets with minimum manual labeling. A prominent variant, threshold-based auto-labeling (TBAL), works by finding a threshold on a model’s confidence scores above which it can accurately label unlabeled data points. However, many models are known to produce overconfident scores, leading to poor TBAL performance. While a natural idea is to apply off-the-shelf calibration methods to alleviate the overconfidence issue, such methods still fall short. Rather than experimenting with ad-hoc choices of confidence functions, we propose a framework for studying the optimal TBAL confidence function. We develop a tractable version...
Research Paper
Pearls from Pebbles: Improved Confidence Functions for Auto-labeling

Auto-labeling is an important family of techniques that produce labeled training sets with minimum manual labeling. A prominent variant, threshold-based auto-labeling (TBAL), works by finding a threshold on a model’s confidence scores above which it can accurately label unlabeled data points. However, many models are known to produce overconfident scores, leading to poor TBAL performance. While a natural idea is…

Sep 18, 2024

H. Vishwakarma, et al.

Learn more about Pearls from Pebbles: Improved Confidence Functions for Auto-labeling
OTTER: Improving Zero-Shot Classification via Optimal Transport
Popular zero-shot models suffer due to artifacts inherited from pretraining. A particularly detrimental artifact, caused by unbalanced web-scale pretraining data, is mismatched label distribution. Existing approaches that seek to repair the label distribution are not suitable in zero-shot settings, as they have incompatible requirements such as access to labeled downstream task data or knowledge of the true label balance in the pretraining distribution. We sidestep these challenges and introduce a simple and lightweight approach to adjust pretrained model predictions via optimal transport. Our technique requires only an estimate of the label distribution of a downstream task. Theoretically, we characterize the...
Research Paper
OTTER: Improving Zero-Shot Classification via Optimal Transport

Popular zero-shot models suffer due to artifacts inherited from pretraining. A particularly detrimental artifact, caused by unbalanced web-scale pretraining data, is mismatched label distribution. Existing approaches that seek to repair the label distribution are not suitable in zero-shot settings, as they have incompatible requirements such as access to labeled downstream task data or knowledge of the true label balance in…

Sep 18, 2024

C. Shin, et al.

Learn more about OTTER: Improving Zero-Shot Classification via Optimal Transport
On the Tradeoff of Intra-/Inter-class Diversity for Supervised Pre-training
Pre-training datasets are critical for building state-of-the-art machine learning models, motivating rigorous study on their impact on downstream tasks. In this work, we study the impact of the trade-off between the intra-class diversity (the number of samples per class) and the inter-class diversity (the number of classes) of a supervised pre-training dataset. Empirically, we found that with the size of the pre-training dataset fixed, the best downstream performance comes with a balance on the intra-/inter-class diversity. To understand the underlying mechanism, we show theoretically that the downstream performance depends monotonically on both types of diversity. Notably, our theory reveals that...
Research Paper
On the Tradeoff of Intra-/Inter-class Diversity for Supervised Pre-training

Pre-training datasets are critical for building state-of-the-art machine learning models, motivating rigorous study on their impact on downstream tasks. In this work, we study the impact of the trade-off between the intra-class diversity (the number of samples per class) and the inter-class diversity (the number of classes) of a supervised pre-training dataset. Empirically, we found that with the size of…

Sep 18, 2024

J. Zhang et al.

Learn more about On the Tradeoff of Intra-/Inter-class Diversity for Supervised Pre-training
Multimodal Data Curation via Object Detection and Filter Ensembles
We propose an approach for curating multimodal data that we used for our entry in the 2023 DataComp competition filtering track. Our technique combines object detection and weak supervision-based ensembling. In the first of two steps in our approach, we employ an out-of-the-box zero-shot object detection model to extract granular information and produce a variety of filter designs. In the second step, we employ weak supervision to ensemble filtering rules. This approach results in a 4% performance improvement when compared to the best-performing baseline, producing the top-ranking position in the small scale track at the time of writing. Furthermore, in...
Research Paper
Multimodal Data Curation via Object Detection and Filter Ensembles

We propose an approach for curating multimodal data that we used for our entry in the 2023 DataComp competition filtering track. Our technique combines object detection and weak supervision-based ensembling. In the first of two steps in our approach, we employ an out-of-the-box zero-shot object detection model to extract granular information and produce a variety of filter designs. In the…

Sep 18, 2024

TH. Huang, et al.

Learn more about Multimodal Data Curation via Object Detection and Filter Ensembles
Merlin: A Vision Language Foundation Model for 3D Computed Tomography
Over 85 million computed tomography (CT) scans are performed annually in the US, of which approximately one quarter focus on the abdomen. Given the current shortage of both general and specialized radiologists, there is a large impetus to use artificial intelligence to alleviate the burden of interpreting these complex imaging studies while simultaneously using the images to extract novel physiological insights. Prior state-of-the-art approaches for automated medical image interpretation leverage vision language models (VLMs). However, current medical VLMs are generally limited to 2D images and short reports, and do not leverage electronic health record (EHR) data for supervision. To overcome...
Research Paper
Merlin: A Vision Language Foundation Model for 3D Computed Tomography

Over 85 million computed tomography (CT) scans are performed annually in the US, of which approximately one quarter focus on the abdomen. Given the current shortage of both general and specialized radiologists, there is a large impetus to use artificial intelligence to alleviate the burden of interpreting these complex imaging studies while simultaneously using the images to extract novel physiological…

Sep 18, 2024

L. Blankemeier, et al.

Learn more about Merlin: A Vision Language Foundation Model for 3D Computed Tomography
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