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Will we run out of data? (arxiv.org)
3 points by pattusk on Dec 23, 2022 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: By comparing how fast training datasets grow with the total stock of public human-written text, the study estimates when the two meet. On current trends, models will exhaust it between 2026 and 2032, so progress will need computer-made text or smarter data use.

Abstract · Will we run out of data? Limits of LLM scaling based on human-generated data

We investigate the potential constraints on LLM scaling posed by the availability of public human-generated text data. We forecast the growing demand for training data based on current trends and estimate the total stock of public human text data. Our findings indicate that if current LLM development trends continue, models will be trained on datasets roughly equal in size to the available stock of public human text data between 2026 and 2032, or slightly earlier if models are overtrained. We explore how progress in language modeling can continue when human-generated text datasets cannot be scaled any further. We argue that synthetic data generation, transfer learning from data-rich domains, and data efficiency improvements might support further progress.

Pablo Villalobos, Anson Ho, Jaime Sevilla, Tamay Besiroglu, Lennart Heim, Marius Hobbhahn
arXiv:2211.04325 · cs.LG, cs.AI, cs.CL, cs.CV, cs.CY · submitted Oct 26, 2022 · updated Jun 4, 2024
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