OPT vs. Galactica

Large language models, which often demand significant computational power and prolonged training periods, have shown remarkable abilities in performing zero- and few-shot learning tasks. The substantial resources required for their creation make it quite difficult for many researchers to replicate these models. Moreover, access to the limited number of models available through APIs is restricted, as users are unable to acquire the full model weights, which hinders academic research. To address these issues, we present Open Pre-trained Transformers (OPT), a series of decoder-only pre-trained transformers that vary in size from 125 million to 175 billion parameters, which we aim to share fully and responsibly with interested researchers. Our research reveals that OPT-175B achieves performance levels comparable to GPT-3, while consuming only one-seventh of the carbon emissions needed for GPT-3's training process. In addition to this, we plan to offer a comprehensive logbook detailing the infrastructural challenges we faced during the project, along with code to aid experimentation with all released models, ensuring that scholars have the necessary resources to further investigate this technology. This initiative not only democratizes access to advanced models but also encourages sustainable practices in the field of artificial intelligence.

The vast quantity of information present today creates a considerable hurdle for scientific progress. As the volume of scientific literature and data grows exponentially, discovering valuable insights within this enormous expanse of information has become a daunting task. In the present day, individuals are increasingly dependent on search engines to retrieve scientific knowledge; however, these tools often fall short in effectively organizing and categorizing such intricate data. Galactica emerges as a cutting-edge language model specifically engineered to capture, synthesize, and analyze scientific knowledge. Its training encompasses a wide range of scientific resources, including research papers, reference texts, and knowledge databases. In a variety of scientific assessments, Galactica consistently outperforms existing models, showcasing its exceptional capabilities. For example, when evaluated on technical knowledge tests that involve LaTeX equations, Galactica scores 68.2%, which is significantly above the 49.0% achieved by the latest GPT-3 model. Additionally, Galactica demonstrates superior reasoning abilities, outdoing Chinchilla in mathematical MMLU with scores of 41.3% compared to 35.7%, and surpassing PaLM 540B in MATH with an impressive 20.4% in contrast to 8.8%. These results not only highlight Galactica's role in enhancing access to scientific information but also underscore its potential to improve our capacity for reasoning through intricate scientific problems. Ultimately, as the landscape of scientific inquiry continues to evolve, tools like Galactica may prove crucial in navigating the complexities of modern science.