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Beat the AI: Investigating Adversarial Human Annotation for Reading Comprehension (2002.00293v2)

Published 2 Feb 2020 in cs.CL

Abstract: Innovations in annotation methodology have been a catalyst for Reading Comprehension (RC) datasets and models. One recent trend to challenge current RC models is to involve a model in the annotation process: humans create questions adversarially, such that the model fails to answer them correctly. In this work we investigate this annotation methodology and apply it in three different settings, collecting a total of 36,000 samples with progressively stronger models in the annotation loop. This allows us to explore questions such as the reproducibility of the adversarial effect, transfer from data collected with varying model-in-the-loop strengths, and generalisation to data collected without a model. We find that training on adversarially collected samples leads to strong generalisation to non-adversarially collected datasets, yet with progressive performance deterioration with increasingly stronger models-in-the-loop. Furthermore, we find that stronger models can still learn from datasets collected with substantially weaker models-in-the-loop. When trained on data collected with a BiDAF model in the loop, RoBERTa achieves 39.9F1 on questions that it cannot answer when trained on SQuAD - only marginally lower than when trained on data collected using RoBERTa itself (41.0F1).

Citations (155)

Summary

  • The paper demonstrates that adversarial human annotation exposes model blind spots and improves generalization across diverse reading comprehension datasets.
  • It employs an iterative loop using models from BiDAF to RoBERTa to generate over 36,000 challenging adversarial questions.
  • Results reveal significant F1 score gains and effective transfer learning, underscoring the method’s impact on advancing RC model performance.

Exploring Adversarial Annotation in Reading Comprehension: An Examination of Model Resilience and Data Generalization

The paper "Beat the AI: Investigating Adversarial Human Annotation for Reading Comprehension" presents an investigation into the methodology of adversarial human annotation within the context of Reading Comprehension (RC) tasks. Conducted by Bartolo et al., the paper focuses on using progressively more advanced models in an iterative loop to generate RC datasets, aiming to gather insights into the robustness of adversarially constructed questions and their role in model training and evaluation.

Methodology and Experimentation

The central technique explored is "Beat the AI," where humans generate questions designed to be incorrectly answered by an AI model, ensuring the questions are adversarial in nature. The researchers apply this method across three sequential setups using BiDAF, BERT, and RoBERTa as the models-in-the-loop, ultimately collecting 36,000 adversarial samples. These datasets allow for multiple analyses, including the reproducibility of adversarial effects, cross-model learning capability, and generalization to non-adversarial datasets.

Key Findings

  1. Generalization Capability: Models trained on adversarial examples showed robust generalization to datasets like SQuAD and NaturalQuestions that were not crafted with an adversarial intent. Notably, training on adversarially collected data led to performance improvements on extractive subsets of other adversarial datasets like DROP, with gains exceeding 20 F1 points for BERT and RoBERTa.
  2. Progressive Model Strength: The paper found a degradation in performance as the strength of the model-in-the-loop increased, illustrating a pivot in the data distribution from standard datasets to those with more complex linguistic challenges, thus becoming progressively harder for simpler models like BiDAF to learn effectively.
  3. Reinforced Learning from Weaker Datasets: Interestingly, stronger models could still learn effectively from datasets collected with significantly weaker models in the loop. For instance, RoBERTa trained on data sourced with a BiDAF model achieved an F1 score nearly equivalent to training on RoBERTa-adversarial data, illustrating a significant transfer learning capability.
  4. Variety and Complexity of Questions: The research highlights how adversarially generated questions possess higher complexity and diversity, leveraging paraphrasing, multi-hop inferences, and requiring external knowledge, contrasting with the predominantly literal nature of standard datasets.

Implications and Future Directions

The findings hold notable implications for the future of RC dataset construction. Employing models in the annotation loop, especially those behind the current cutting-edge, appears promising for eliciting model blind spots and enhancing dataset robustness. This adversarial approach sharpens focus on areas models find challenging, potentially propelling advancements in natural language understanding capabilities.

Furthermore, the success of models learning from weaker adversary-generated data supports the feasibility of utilizing this approach across older, mature datasets where model performance has plateaued. Such data might be highly valuable for evolving state-of-the-art models, providing nuanced challenges reflective of real-world language complexity.

As future directions, the scope of model-in-the-loop adversarial annotation could extend to other domains within NLP, provided the tasks are amenable to adversarial methodologies. Continued exploration into the impact of ensemble strategies to mitigate model-specific biases in annotations might further enhance the utility of such datasets.

This comprehensive examination of adversarial annotation methodology underscores its potential not only in evaluating and benchmarking current models but also in pioneering innovative data acquisition paradigms that catalyze the development of more robust AI systems.