e-ISSN: Pending
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Does Pre-training Induce Systematic Inference? How Masked Language Models Acquire Commonsense Knowledge

Ian Porada; Alessandro Sordoni; Jackie Chi Kit Cheung · 2021 · arXiv

WASTE classifies this as Negative / Null Result Report · AI classification, approximate

The study found no significant effect — useful as a negative control or null benchmark for your own design.

Abstract (excerpt)

Transformer models pre-trained with a masked-language-modeling objective (e.g., BERT) encode commonsense knowledge as evidenced by behavioral probes; however, the extent to which this knowledge is acquired by systematic inference over the semantics of the pre-training corpora is an open question. To answer this question, we selectively inject verbalized knowledge into the minibatches of a BERT model during pre-training and evaluate how well the model generalizes to supported inferences. We find generalization does not improve over the course of pre-training, suggesting that commonsense knowled

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Metadata source: arXiv