Neural Machine Unranking

We tackle the problem of machine unlearning within neural information retrieval, termed Neural Machine UnRanking (NuMuR) for short. Many of the mainstream task- or model-agnostic approaches for machine unlearning were designed for classification tasks. First, we demonstrate that these methods perform poorly on NuMuR tasks due to the unique challenges posed by neural information retrieval. Then, we develop a methodology for NuMuR named Contrastive and Consistent Loss (CoCoL), which effectively balances the objectives of data forgetting and model performance retention. Experimental results demonstrate that CoCoL facilitates more effective and controllable data removal than existing techniques.

Advancing continual lifelong learning in neural information retrieval: definition, dataset, framework, and empirical evaluation

Continual learning refers to the capability of a machine learning model to learn and adapt to new information, without compromising its performance on previously learned tasks. Although several studies have investigated continual learning methods for information retrieval tasks, a well-defined task formulation is still lacking, and it is unclear how typical learning strategies perform in this context. To address this challenge, a systematic task formulation of continual neural information retrieval is presented, along with a multiple-topic dataset that simulates continuous information retrieval. A comprehensive continual neural information retrieval framework consisting of typical retrieval models and continual learning strategies is then proposed. Empirical evaluations illustrate that the proposed framework can successfully prevent catastrophic forgetting in neural information retrieval and enhance performance on previously learned tasks. The results indicate that embedding-based retrieval models experience a decline in their continual learning performance as the topic shift distance and dataset volume of new tasks increase. In contrast, pretraining-based models do not show any such correlation. Adopting suitable learning strategies can mitigate the effects of topic shift and data augmentation.

ArcGPT: A Large Language Model Tailored for Real-world Archival Applications

Archives play a crucial role in preserving information and knowledge, and the exponential growth of such data necessitates efficient and automated tools for managing and utilizing archive information resources. Archival applications involve managing massive data that are challenging to process and analyze. Although LLMs have made remarkable progress in diverse domains, there are no publicly available archives tailored LLM. Addressing this gap, we introduce ArcGPT, to our knowledge, the first general-purpose LLM tailored to the archival field. To enhance model performance on real-world archival tasks, ArcGPT has been pre-trained on massive and extensive archival domain data. Alongside ArcGPT, we release AMBLE, a benchmark comprising four real-world archival tasks. Evaluation on AMBLE shows that ArcGPT outperforms existing state-of-the-art models, marking a substantial step forward in effective archival data management. Ultimately, ArcGPT aims to better serve the archival community, aiding archivists in their crucial role of preserving and harnessing our collective information and knowledge.