Improving Few-Shot Generalization by Exploring and Exploiting Auxiliary Data

TL;DR

This paper introduces scalable algorithms for few-shot learning with auxiliary data, leveraging explore-exploit strategies to improve generalization and outperform existing methods, including large language models like GPT-3.

Contribution

We develop two algorithms, EXP3-FLAD and UCB1-FLAD, that scale independently of auxiliary dataset count, enhancing few-shot learning performance.

Findings

Our methods outperform prior FLAD approaches by 4%.

Achieved superior results with 3 billion parameter models over GPT-3.

Algorithms scale efficiently to 100x more auxiliary datasets.

Abstract

Few-shot learning is valuable in many real-world applications, but learning a generalizable model without overfitting to the few labeled datapoints is challenging. In this work, we focus on Few-shot Learning with Auxiliary Data (FLAD), a training paradigm that assumes access to auxiliary data during few-shot learning in hopes of improving generalization. Previous works have proposed automated methods for mixing auxiliary and target data, but these methods typically scale linearly (or worse) with the number of auxiliary datasets, limiting their practicality. In this work we relate FLAD to the explore-exploit dilemma that is central to the multi-armed bandit setting and derive algorithms whose computational complexity is independent of the number of auxiliary datasets, allowing us to scale to 100x more auxiliary datasets than prior methods. We propose two algorithms -- EXP3-FLAD and UCB1-FLAD -- and compare them with prior FLAD methods that either explore or exploit, finding that the combination of exploration and exploitation is crucial. Through extensive experimentation we find that our methods outperform all pre-existing FLAD methods by 4% and lead to the first 3 billion parameter language models that outperform the 175 billion parameter GPT-3. Overall, our work suggests that the discovery of better, more efficient mixing strategies for FLAD may provide a viable path towards substantially improving generalization in few-shot learning.