Summary of Bertaqa: How Much Do Language Models Know About Local Culture?, by Julen Etxaniz and Gorka Azkune and Aitor Soroa and Oier Lopez De Lacalle and Mikel Artetxe
BertaQA: How Much Do Language Models Know About Local Culture?
by Julen Etxaniz, Gorka Azkune, Aitor Soroa, Oier Lopez de Lacalle, Mikel Artetxe
First submitted to arxiv on: 11 Jun 2024
Categories
- Main: Computation and Language (cs.CL)
- Secondary: Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
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| Summary difficulty | Written by | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| High | Paper authors | High Difficulty Summary Read the original abstract here |
| Medium | GrooveSquid.com (original content) | Medium Difficulty Summary Medium Difficulty summary: This research paper introduces BertaQA, a multiple-choice trivia dataset that spans two languages – English and Basque. The dataset is comprised of local and global subsets, with the former focusing on topics relevant to Basque culture. The study finds that state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) struggle to perform well on local cultural knowledge, despite excelling on broader global topics. However, pre-training these models in Basque improves their performance on Basque culture questions even when queried in English. This research provides evidence of knowledge transfer from low-resource to high-resource languages and sheds light on the complex relationship between language and knowledge. The authors’ analysis also reveals that prior findings may not hold true when evaluated on local topics. |
| Low | GrooveSquid.com (original content) | Low Difficulty Summary Low Difficulty summary: This study is about how well computers can understand information related to different cultures. Right now, these computers are very good at understanding English-language information, but they struggle with information from other cultures. The researchers created a special dataset of trivia questions that includes both general and Basque-specific topics. They found that even the best computer programs have trouble answering questions about Basque culture. However, if these programs learn more about Basque before being tested, they can do much better on those types of questions. |
