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Mahesh

26/04/24 07:45 AM IST

Microsoft unveils Phi-3-mini

In News
  • A few days after Meta unveiled its Llama 3 Large Language Model (LLM), Microsoft recently unveiled the latest version of its ‘lightweight’ AI model – the Phi-3-Mini.
About Phi-3-mini
  • Phi-3-Mini is believed to be first among the three small models that Microsoft is planning to release.
  • It has reportedly outperformed models of the same size and the next size up across a variety of benchmarks, in areas like language, reasoning, coding, and maths.
  • Essentially, language models are the backbone of AI applications like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.
  • These models are trained on existing data to solve common language problems such as text classification, answering questions, text generation, document summarisation, etc.
  • The ‘Large’ in LLMs has two meanings — the enormous size of training data; and the parameter count.
  • In the field of Machine Learning, where machines are equipped to learn things themselves without being instructed, parameters are the memories and knowledge that a machine has learned during its model training.
  • They define the skill of the model in solving a specific problem.
Features
  • The latest model from Microsoft expands the selection of high-quality language models available to customers, offering more practical choices as they build generative AI applications.
  • Phi-3-mini, a 3.8B language model, is available on AI development platforms such as Microsoft Azure AI Studio, HuggingFace, and Ollama.
  • The amount of conversation that an AI can read and write at any given time is called the context window, and is measured in something called tokens.
  • According to Microsoft, Phi-3-mini is available in two variants, one with 4K context-length, and another with 128K tokens.
  • Phi-3-mini is the first model in its class to support a context window of up to 128K tokens, with little impact on quality.
  • The model is instruction-tuned, which means that it is trained to follow the different types of instructions given by users. This also means that the model is ‘ready to use out-of-the-box’.
  • Microsoft says that in the coming weeks, new models will be added to the Phi-3 family to offer customers more flexibility.
  • Phi-3-small (7B) and Phi-3-Medium will be available in the Azure AI model catalogue and other model libraries shortly.
Different from others
  • Phi-3-mini is an SLM. Simply, SLMs are more streamlined versions of large language models.
  • When compared to LLMs, smaller AI models are also cost-effective to develop and operate, and they perform better on smaller devices like laptops and smartphones.
  • According to Microsoft, SLMs are great for “resource-constrained environments including on-device and offline inference scenarios.”
  • The company claims such models are good for scenarios where fast response times are critical, say for chabots or virtual assistants.
  • Moreover, they are ideal for cost-constrained use cases, particularly with simpler tasks.
  • While LLMs are trained on massive general data, SLMs stand out with their specialisation.
  • Through fine-tuning, SLMs can be customised for specific tasks and achieve accuracy and efficiency in doing them.
  • Most SLMs undergo targeted training, demanding considerably less computing power and energy compared to LLMs.
  • SLMs also differ when it comes to inference speed and latency. Their compact size allows for quicker processing. Their cost makes them appealing to smaller organisations and research groups.
Phi-3 models
  • Phi-2 was introduced in December 2023 and reportedly equaled models like Meta’s Llama 2.
  • Microsoft claims that the Phi-3-mini is better than its predecessors and can respond like a model that is 10 times bigger than it.
  • Based on the performance results shared by Microsoft, Phi-3 models significantly outperformed several models of the same size or even larger ones, including Gemma 7B and Mistral 7B, in key areas.
  • Microsoft claims that Phi-3-mini demonstrates strong reasoning and logic capabilities.
Source- Indian Express

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