Making AI Smarter and Smaller: Efficient Model Training Guide

Making AI Smarter and Smaller: A Practical Guide to Efficient Model Training

Hi, I'm Sanchay Thalnerkar, an AI Engineer. I've been exploring ways to make AI more efficient, and I'm excited to share an interesting approach I've been working on. In the world of artificial intelligence, bigger models often steal the spotlight, but what if you could get similar results without the hefty price tag and massive computing power? This guide walks you through a clever approach: using a large AI model to create top-notch training data, then using that data to train a smaller, more manageable model.

My Method: Efficient AI in Three Steps

First, we leverage a large model like Meta-Llama-3.1-405B, made accessible by AI/ML API, to generate a dataset of marketing scenarios. AI/ML APIs platform allows us to tap into the vast capabilities of this powerful model, creating the perfect study guide for our smaller model. This data is then formatted using the alpaca prompt structure, making it easy for a smaller model to learn effectively. Finally, we use a tool called Unsloth to efficiently train our smaller model, starting with Meta-Llama-3.1-8B, on this data.

The outcome? A model that's smaller, faster, and capable of producing high-quality outputs for specific marketing tasks, comparable to what you'd expect from a much larger model. For instance, when prompted with "Create a marketing campaign to promote a chocolate bar for Cadbury, targeting adults and boomers," the results can be surprisingly good.

This method offers several benefits. It allows for creating AI models specialized in specific tasks, making it accessible even to small companies or individual developers without the need for expensive hardware or massive budgets. By focusing on generating diverse, high-quality training data and carefully fine-tuning your smaller model, you can create powerful and efficient AI tools tailored to your needs.

Step 1: Setting Up the Environment

Before we begin, let's set up our development environment:

• Install Python: If you haven't already, download and install Python from python.org

Create a virtual environment:

• Open Command Prompt
• Navigate to your project directory
• Run the following commands:

pip install virtualenv
virtualenv venv
.\venv\Scripts\activate

Install required packages: Run the following commands in your activated virtual environment:

pip install requests
pip install unsloth
pip install pandas

Start by importing libraries

Step 2: Setting Up the AI/ML API Client and Handling API Calls

Before we dive into creating the data generation function, it's crucial to first set up the AI/ML API client. This API offers a suite of powerful AI functionalities, including text completion, image inference, and more. Let's walk through the necessary steps to get everything configured and ready for use.

1.1: Create an Account and Obtain an API Key

• Create an Account: Visit the AI/ML API website and sign up for an account.
• Generate an API Key: After logging in, navigate to your account dashboard and generate your API key here.

You'll need to use this API key to authenticate your requests and access the various AI models available through the API.

1.2: Initialize the AI/ML API Client

Once you have your API key, you can set up the client in your environment. This client will be used to interact with the AI/ML API for making various AI-related requests.

In your code, replace your_api_key_here with the API key you generated earlier. This client will be the primary interface for sending requests to the AI/ML API.

1.3: Implementing Rate-Limited API Calls

To handle the API interactions more effectively, especially under rate limits or other transient issues, we define a function called rate_limited_api_call. This function ensures that our requests are resilient to potential issues like rate limiting by the API.

Step 3: Creating Data Generation Function

Let's walk through the entire process of how the data generation function works, step by step.

First, we define a function called generate_multiple_marketing_samples. This function's job is to create several marketing scenarios that we can later use to train a smaller, more efficient AI model.

Output Example:

Let's see what this function outputs. Suppose we ask for a few marketing scenarios:

Instruction: Create a Facebook ad for a new fitness program targeting busy professionals.
Input: The program is designed for people with limited time but who still want to achieve their fitness goals.
Response: A detailed ad with a hook, narrative, and call to action, designed to attract leads from busy professionals.

The generated scenarios are formatted in a way that makes them directly usable as training data for a smaller AI model.

Why This Method Works

This function is simple yet powerful. It allows us to harness the capabilities of a large AI model to generate high-quality, diverse training data. This data is then perfectly formatted to train a smaller model that can perform specific marketing tasks. By controlling the number of samples and the format, we ensure that the generated data is both relevant and easy to use, making the overall process more efficient and effective.

Step 4: Quality Control

After generating our samples, it's crucial to ensure that they meet a certain standard of quality. This is where our quality control function comes into play.

Why This Is Important

By passing each sample through these two checks, we make sure that only high-quality data is used to train our model. The length check ensures that the samples are detailed enough, while the repetition check ensures that the content is varied and rich in vocabulary.

Step 5: Ensuring Diversity

To build a well-rounded and effective AI model, it's essential that our training data covers a broad range of marketing scenarios. This is where our diversity tracking function comes into play.

Why This Matters

Ensuring diversity in our dataset is crucial because it leads to a more versatile and capable AI model. If the training data only focuses on a few industries or marketing channels, the model might struggle with scenarios outside of those areas.

Step 6: Fine-Tuning Dataset Creation

In this step, we aim to create a dataset specifically designed for fine-tuning a language model to generate marketing and social media content. The create_finetuning_dataset function manages this process, generating and compiling a set of high-quality samples.

The result is a dataset of 1,000 well-crafted marketing scenarios, each formatted with clear instructions, relevant input, and detailed responses.

Step 7: Model Preparation and Quantization

With the dataset ready, the next crucial step is to prepare the language model for fine-tuning. This involves using the Unsloth library to load a pre-trained model while applying certain optimizations.

Step 8: Training the Model

In this step, we move on to the crucial phase of training the model using the SFTTrainer from the Hugging Face TRL library.

This code sets up the training process where the model parameters are adjusted to better fit the data.

Step 9: Generating and Parsing Output

After the model has been trained, the next step is to generate text based on a given prompt and then parse this output into a structured format.

Step 10: Saving and Reloading the Model

In this final step, we focus on saving the fine-tuned model and tokenizer so that they can be used later without needing to retrain the model from scratch.

Comparison between 405B and 8B for the Same Prompt

When comparing the outputs of the original 405B model with those from the fine-tuned 8B model, the differences are clear and significant. The fine-tuned model demonstrates a more refined and practical approach, making it a standout tool for real-world applications.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the fine-tuned 8B model proves to be a powerful and practical tool for anyone needing to create content that's focused, effective, and ready to use. It eliminates the excess and delivers clear, precise results that save time and effort.