[HN Gopher] Finetuning of Falcon-7B LLM Using QLoRA on Mental He...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Finetuning of Falcon-7B LLM Using QLoRA on Mental Health
       Conversational Dataset
        
       Author : iamarunbrahma
       Score  : 140 points
       Date   : 2023-08-25 09:34 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | dmbche wrote:
       | This is erring close to letting an LLM give medical advice to
       | people without them fully understanding what LLMs are. People
       | seeking help with their mental health might not be in the
       | clearest headspace to understand the nuances of using a chatbot
       | vs their own research or seeking a professional.
       | 
       | Edit0: Problem coming from the possibility of the LLM giving bad
       | advice leading to a negative outcome for the person seeking
       | service.
        
         | candiodari wrote:
         | ... and yet an LLM might be a LOT more accessible and
         | trustworthy (meaning that what you discuss stays private) than
         | a mental health professional.
         | 
         | Even for medical services, in most of the world people actually
         | have very limited access to medical professionals. Would this
         | LLM beat people just attempting to fix things themselves?
        
           | practice9 wrote:
           | > trustworthy (meaning that what you discuss stays private)
           | 
           | > in most of the world people actually have very limited
           | access to medical professionals
           | 
           | Licensed and competent professionals are also hard to come
           | by. An incompetent psychotherapist can absolutely make things
           | worse, while LLM will just give "average good" advice.
           | 
           | LLMs could be superior when a long, intensive session is
           | needed. You could spend a weekend talking to it and resolving
           | some internal issues.
        
         | can16358p wrote:
         | It might result in negative outcome for 1 person whereas it can
         | have positive outcomes for 99 people. And there'd be a similar
         | ratio in the real-world psylogical/medical advice anyway: it's
         | not 100% positive for everybody in actual advice too.
         | 
         | As long as it's clearly labeled as this is not medical advice,
         | it's much better than not having it.
        
           | samueldyson10 wrote:
           | I agree with you! We must encourage developers and ML
           | engineers to come up with solutions like these.
           | 
           | Medical costs are too expensive nowadays. Even health
           | insurance won't cover all the costs. We need solutions that
           | can help office workers or students to talk to someone about
           | their mental stress without having to go through the hassle
           | of visiting a doctor and pay an exorbitant fee. If
           | suggesstion provided by these models are atleast 70%
           | reliable, still it's better. You can have an AI companion
           | with whom you can chat and discuss about your problems.
           | 
           | AI won't judge you. AI will listen to your problems
           | patiently. And like your friend whose advices are not 100%
           | reliable. Advices from AI assistant who can be your virtual
           | friend won't be 100% reliable. But, still you will have
           | someone talk to.
           | 
           | Think about people who don't have friends or family. Whom
           | they should to connect to? AI can be atleast their virtual
           | friend and advisor, atleast not 100% correct. But, even your
           | friends are not 100% correct too.
        
         | AbrahamParangi wrote:
         | Access to doctors is limited by the AMA which functions as a
         | cabal or traditional guild: controlling the supply of doctors
         | to maintain high salaries by insulating them from supply and
         | demand (while also controlling or at least pretending to
         | control quality).
         | 
         | In my opinion being 100,000x lower cost gives such a system
         | some leeway in being worse and I think most patients would
         | agree.
        
           | SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
           | > In my opinion being 100,000x lower cost gives such a system
           | some leeway in being worse and I think most patients would
           | agree.
           | 
           | I would heavily disagree with this. We had an AI counselor
           | actively encouraging disordered eating and triggering people
           | into relapse on an eating disorder helpline from logic like
           | this.
        
             | AbrahamParangi wrote:
             | While I understand that some will disagree, it's not like
             | there's an objective standard against which we are
             | measuring both the AI and the human counselors to begin
             | with.
             | 
             | Without a standard it's just anecdotes and with a standard
             | there's clarity on when the increased costs no longer
             | justify the lower access and potentially higher quality. I
             | suspect that if we instituted an objective standard we
             | would find that AI is already capable of meeting or
             | exceeding some proportion of people currently employed in
             | the role today.
        
               | SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
               | This cannot possibly be the case when there was a clear
               | A/B test scenario here. AI was dropped in, nothing else
               | changed about the website, suddenly cases of relapse and
               | worsening conditions went up.
        
               | AbrahamParangi wrote:
               | I think you're confusing my statement that "it could be
               | done well" with "your team did it well"
        
             | explaininjs wrote:
             | And I'm very familiar with AMA-certified (TM) "doctors" who
             | have done the same.
        
               | SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
               | In this case there's a fairly clear A/B test where if we
               | dropped in an AI instead of hired counselors, the number
               | of negative outcomes went up.
        
           | 0xcde4c3db wrote:
           | I've read that it's largely the residency system (which, from
           | the outside, feels more like hazing than training) that
           | limits positions, and I don't think that's under any direct
           | control by the AMA. Wikipedia says it's mostly funded by
           | Medicare.
        
             | AbrahamParangi wrote:
             | The AMA lobbies to keep the supply of residency slots
             | restricted* in 1997 the AMA successfully lobbied to freeze
             | the funding for new residency slots at 1996 levels.
             | Lobbying by the AMA is also no small part of why it's so
             | hard for a foreign-born doctor to practice medicine in the
             | US.
             | 
             | *although in the face of the incredible pressure they're
             | about to face from AI they may be opening up
        
             | dontupvoteme wrote:
             | The residency system is insane, iirc was founded by a guy
             | who was constantly on coke and then took heroin to sleep.
             | Then that became the standard.
        
               | xigency wrote:
               | It's an incredibly dangerous and unethical practice that
               | is universal in US hospitals.
        
         | Simorgh wrote:
         | Speaking here with some experience of mental health services,
         | professional misdiagnosis and incompetence within the service
         | is so normalised that that wouldn't be my main concern.
         | 
         | If someone is experiencing mental health, and chooses to open
         | up and have a chat with such as AI, that itself is a positive
         | sign. That the AI could be on demand only makes it more
         | valuable as a tool.
        
           | dimal wrote:
           | As a person who also has experience with mental health
           | services, I fully agree.
           | 
           | People seem to have this misguided notion that when they tell
           | someone to "seek professional help" that the "professional"
           | they seek will actually know what they're doing. Generally,
           | they don't. Beyond that, even the best therapists make
           | enormous mistakes. And most people don't get the best.
           | 
           | I honestly think that an AI could do better than most
           | therapists, and I'm sure it would be better than most
           | psychiatrists.
        
             | quickthrower2 wrote:
             | AI could... but AI safety is a hard problem, and this
             | particular training - I am not sure how it was done but if
             | you just let it rip on some inputs it wont necessarily
             | always be safe.
        
             | pstuart wrote:
             | The professionals are doing _educated guessing_ when it
             | comes to treatment, both medicinally and psychiatrically.
             | 
             | AI _should_ be part of the toolkit of that guessing.
        
         | cdblades wrote:
         | I think you're being far to mild: this absolutely is letting an
         | LLM give people not just medical advice, but medical treatment
         | 
         | This is absurdly dangerous, and I"m continually astounded by
         | the lack of push-back, especially in this community. This
         | community understands what LLMs are much better than the
         | general public.
         | 
         | Same thing with the post a while back of a ycombinator startup
         | that used AI to generate survey data. It's plain what it is,
         | but there's shockingly little push-back.
        
           | 2devnull wrote:
           | If you're shocked by lack of push-back, you are in store for
           | a lot more shocks going forward. People that build things and
           | people that gatekeep, regulate, etc... are mostly disjoint
           | sets. They are the two sides to upcoming war. Progress vs
           | safety. The world as a whole is tilting towards progress
           | right now, we've seen the limitations to safety.
        
           | syntaxing wrote:
           | At least it's something. The alternative today in the US is
           | nothing. It's easy for us to discuss the morality of this
           | when we have a cushy wage and cushy benefits. A lot of
           | Americans cannot afford the deductible or even have
           | insurance. While the obvious "least dangerous" and most moral
           | solution is universal healthcare but that's not happening
           | anytime soon for anyone younger than 65. There's little push
           | back probably because most people here understand this.
           | Something while dangerous is better than nothing.
        
             | lemper wrote:
             | I can't wait to read a dude who put a noose on himself
             | because of advice from this model on the news.
        
               | 1024core wrote:
               | If you can convince such a model to suggest such a course
               | of action, please blog about it.
        
               | samueldyson10 wrote:
               | Oh, please don't be so pessimistic. Just like old
               | generation used to say Google and Facebook will kill a
               | lot of people.
               | 
               | Do you think Google Search suggestion for any medical-
               | related are all true? But, people still search for their
               | problems and self-diagnose. How many of them suffered for
               | that?
        
               | robotnikman wrote:
               | This has already happened unfortunately
               | 
               | https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/31/man-ends-his-
               | life-a...
        
               | lemper wrote:
               | good lord in heaven. my expectations were low but this
               | one takes the cake.
        
             | ddingus wrote:
             | That argument isn't good enough. And I agree with you it
             | really sucks in the usa. And maybe we all need to be
             | talking to everyone else about fixing that. I'm down for
             | that conversation anytime any day.
             | 
             | It is profoundly irresponsible to basically encourage
             | people to self-diagnose. It's going to kill a number of
             | them too. That's no joke.
        
               | samueldyson10 wrote:
               | We can rely on AI just for basic preliminary advices just
               | like we rely on Google Search. Google Search also
               | contains lot of blog posts that are untrue. Do they kill
               | a lot of people? No, Right? Similarly, AI can be used for
               | basic guidance. After that one can consult psychiatrist
               | if he/she is having money in their pocket.
        
               | ddingus wrote:
               | "It won't happen to me."
               | 
               | But it could! You may feel it makes sense. And for some
               | of us it may make sense too.
               | 
               | What happens when it doesn't and you do not know?
        
               | drsamuel507 wrote:
               | Yes, you are right about it. It can happen to anyone. We
               | need to cautiously develop AI models related to
               | healthcare.
        
               | bigyikes wrote:
               | How about the opportunity cost of people dying because
               | they don't have access to any treatment? It can be very
               | challenging to find a qualified professional, even if you
               | have the necessary funds, insurance, and determination.
               | 
               | LLM mental health treatment can't come soon enough.
        
               | bugglebeetle wrote:
               | > LLM mental health treatment can't come soon enough.
               | 
               | If you think LLMs perform at a level that they can help
               | resolve the mental health crisis in the US, you are very
               | much a part of that problem. They can't even always
               | produce functional code without heavy steering, let alone
               | negotiate the fraught domain of psychological and
               | psychiatric health.
               | 
               | Foisting people in crisis off on unpredictable text
               | generation engines is IMO a textbook example of the
               | fundamentally anti-social character of American society
               | that produces so many of the mental health problems that
               | this country faces.
        
               | xigency wrote:
               | > If you think LLMs perform at a level that they can help
               | resolve the mental health crisis in the US, you are very
               | much a part of that problem.
               | 
               | Bogus. How do you know an LLM isn't better than human led
               | treatment because the patient can be honest and have
               | privacy, free to discuss anything without data leaving
               | their premises.
               | 
               | Alternatively, how do you know that a high level of care
               | is needed for all patients? There are waiting rooms
               | filled with people trying to get a chance to talk to
               | someone about their problems who will listen, and others
               | who don't come in at all because they have no insurance.
        
               | bugglebeetle wrote:
               | > Bogus. How do you know an LLM isn't better than human
               | led treatment because the patient can be honest and have
               | privacy, free to discuss anything without data leaving
               | their premises.
               | 
               | This has the evidentiary burden entirely backwards. We
               | have evidence for the efficacy of various forms of
               | psychological and psychiatric interventions and none for
               | that produced by LLMs. I'm not even sure if it's possible
               | or ethical to test them for this purpose, as it would
               | require OpenAI levels of RLHF training to get them to
               | adhere to current guidelines and standards of care.
        
               | xigency wrote:
               | I agree that this is unknown. In terms of finding the
               | answer, I guess you'll have to wait and see what
               | optimistic or curious scientists, engineers, and doctors
               | build and what they find.
               | 
               | For ethics, how is this more dangerous than trials for a
               | new heart medication that might kill patients? In fact,
               | the only way to know for sure, is to try and see.
               | 
               | In terms of early results, these kinds of toy projects
               | will be the frontline since any lawyer would tell you to
               | not touch this with a 10ft pole. But I doubt a Github
               | project would face that scrutiny since it takes technical
               | skills to setup which requires knowledge and intent on
               | the part of the user.
        
               | bugglebeetle wrote:
               | > how is this more dangerous than trials for a new heart
               | medication that might kill patients?
               | 
               | Clinical trials happen through an established regulatory
               | framework to minimize harm to participants, for
               | starters...
        
               | ddingus wrote:
               | Yes, it is ugly!
               | 
               | The thing is bad actors are essentially forcing arguably
               | unethical tools onto people in need.
               | 
               | Our current Healthcare struggle is completely
               | unnecessary.
               | 
               | A good percentage of our economic struggles are equally
               | unnecessary.
               | 
               | The only reason we are even having these discussions is
               | too many people with means are not employing those means
               | in ways that make it worth allowing said means at all.
               | 
               | Greed, psychopaths, ignorance and more are the problem.
               | 
               | People are saying:
               | 
               | Basic health care can't come soon enough.
               | 
               | Drug price reform can't...
               | 
               | Mental health
               | 
               | You get the idea.
               | 
               | I get it. Lots of us are desperate.
               | 
               | I lost a home over this health care shit. Basically
               | traded more time with my wife for our home. Brutal as
               | fuck. I currently pay close to $2k in premiums and have
               | difficulty finding options because I fall into what
               | Franken called the "doughnut hole."
               | 
               | Have considered some sort of crime, or leaving the
               | country many times too.
               | 
               | Like I said, ugly.
        
               | fnordpiglet wrote:
               | I don't know I have a side in this, but it does seem
               | strange to take the side that "we should talk about
               | people not getting health care" and "self diagnosis is
               | going to kill them too." So, passive death is better than
               | active death? No one specifically being at fault is
               | somehow morally superior to some LLM being at fault?
               | 
               | Talking about something with no expectation of it being
               | fixed is doing nothing, and people are still dying. If
               | some people die due to bad advice from a machine, but
               | some people survive, is that better then everyone dying
               | due to inaction of any sort?
               | 
               | We won't get getting universal health care in the US.
               | Maybe there's something to a democratization of subpar,
               | but at least available, medical advice and care?
        
             | jasonhansel wrote:
             | This could well be much worse than nothing.
        
               | panagathon wrote:
               | If your leg gets blown off, and the only help you're
               | getting is from Gary, who claims a strong stomach and has
               | used a needle kit before, for sewing closed your femoral
               | artery, I reckon you're taking a swing.
               | 
               | Are you sure the desperate don't deserve this attempt to
               | help them? I can't imagine what it must be like to have
               | such issues and have zero professional options to turn
               | to, and you know what the solution for many is.
        
               | squeaky-clean wrote:
               | What if your leg is just sore, and Gary swears it's
               | actually been blown off and he needs to operate
               | immediately?
        
               | jasonhansel wrote:
               | A bad therapist could be substantially worse than no
               | treatment for mental health issues, particularly if
               | people see it as more authoritative than it is.
        
           | ancorevard wrote:
           | Problem is that practitioners of mental health treatment
           | themselves cause much damage today. This will not change
           | that. Perhaps we're not too far from an LLM causing less
           | damage than the _average_ mental health practitioner - with
           | far more availability not to mention affordability.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | That's arguably for regulators to decide though, not
             | technologists who have no exposure to the harm they cause.
             | I can't even say "engineers" because engineers are held to
             | a standard of care [1] that people slinging code are not.
             | The fact that medical practitioners are sometimes wrong is
             | not a legitimate means to wave away AI safety.
             | 
             | In this instance, the solution isn't immature tech (that
             | may [may!] one day be good tech), it's policy that enables
             | healthcare access. You aren't going to fix that with LLMs.
             | But, you know, that's what tech people keep doing. Poor
             | tech solutions to people problems, and sometimes getting
             | wealthy due to luck along the way.
             | 
             | [1] https://docs.acec.org/pub/18803059-a2fd-2d06-cc39-a6d1d
             | d5752...
        
           | slashdev wrote:
           | I see your "first do no harm" but I'll counter that it is
           | probably better than the alternative, which is to do nothing.
           | And it may lead to people seeking professional help. It's
           | something for the unfilled gap in between, it's not a
           | replacement for professional help.
        
           | srackey wrote:
           | This is in fact _not_ "absurdly dangerous". It may actually
           | be safer than using a biological intelligence for the same
           | purpose. Given that, and the shortage of biological mental
           | health workers, it seems reasonable that many many more would
           | suffer negative outcomes were they not allowed to use this
           | tech. As such, I'd argue that _your comment_ is absurdly
           | dangerous rhetoric, and your license to post on this web
           | forum should be revoked.
        
         | BTinfinity wrote:
         | I did see one attempt[0] at creating a doctor from an LLM on
         | Github. From their ReadMe.MD overview: "This is an open-source
         | project with a mission to provide everyone their own private
         | doctor"
         | 
         | Hard not to agree with your edit0 as well; search engines often
         | give doomsday diagnosis, how long before we're all
         | hypochondriacs under the latest LLM cult?
         | 
         | [0] https://github.com/llSourcell/DoctorGPT
        
           | version_five wrote:
           | My biggest concern with that would be that very quickly
           | health authorities or insurance companies will force these on
           | people and you'll be forced to interact with an LLM and not
           | get to talk to a doctor for most stuff.
        
             | tayo42 wrote:
             | I don't see why it would be the worst thing as a first
             | level thing to interact with, freeing up doctors for more
             | important tasks or trickier individuals.
             | 
             | How many people are showing up to doctors for bullshit,
             | going to er for colds and mild flu's, or symptoms that
             | can't be talked until tests are ordered
             | 
             | Last time I went to the Dr, I waited two hours, I finally
             | saw a nurse who took down my symptoms, ordered a test, and
             | said a Dr will follow up,who just gave me some antibiotics
             | for a couple of days before even taking the test.
             | 
             | Why couldn't an llm take my symptoms, match it with similar
             | tests needed and order the test automatically and have me
             | leave with the same antibiotic?then follow up with a doctor
             | when the lab is done.
             | 
             | Same for yearly physicals, just have an llm order all the
             | tests and I'll talk with the dr later.
             | 
             | All sorts of low level stuff can be automated away.
        
             | haldujai wrote:
             | Zero chance with regulation. We still don't let machines
             | final read ECGs and insurance companies pay a physician
             | (typically a cardiologist) to overread them. These have
             | been FDA approved algorithms for over a decade already.
        
           | mellosouls wrote:
           | Discussed here:
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37105352
        
       | xigency wrote:
       | It seems I'm only one of a few people who finds this area to be
       | promising. Given that mental health care is expensive, that many
       | people suffering are isolated with no one to talk to, and that
       | talking to someone about your issues, whether or not they are a
       | medical professional, is beneficial, I don't see why this
       | shouldn't be pushed further. In terms of risk, as others have
       | said, the Internet already exists filled with bad advice and TV
       | has tons of poor medical content. Our apps and media have been
       | hyper optimized by commercial interests in ways that are bad for
       | mental health. Building these resources is the right thing to do,
       | in my opinion.
        
         | bpiche wrote:
         | Tell that to the shareholders when your mental health bot tells
         | a customer how to end their life. Maybe they intentionally
         | jailbroke it because they wanted it to go off script, or it
         | just hallucinated. Not going to matter very much when the stock
         | craters.
        
           | xigency wrote:
           | This is a GitHub repo, not a NASDAQ corp. Shareholders'
           | bottom line will never be my concern in the mental health
           | space. If someone wants to build a startup in this space,
           | they should organize it as a public benefit corporation, non-
           | profit, or a co-op.
           | 
           | In terms of outcomes, many people are put on hold calling the
           | suicide hotline. In terms of pranks, the suggested one is
           | criminal and would be prosecuted as such. In terms of
           | accidents, yeah, if this were a product, it needs more
           | fineprint and guardrails.
        
             | bpiche wrote:
             | Well, Headspace is doing it, and I'm pretty sure they're
             | public. I think Ginger gave it a shot a year or two ago.
             | Could go on.
             | 
             | edit: Crunchbase says Headspace acquired Ginger recenty.
             | Didn't realize Ginger was a YC company! Shame. Now I know
             | why they wanted me to sign an NDA before talking to a
             | recruiter.
        
               | [deleted]
        
       | bcjordan wrote:
       | Author's writeup about the project:
       | https://medium.com/@iamarunbrahma/fine-tuning-of-falcon-7b-l...
        
         | thejackgoode wrote:
         | Turning on reader view to read medium.com. How the turntables
         | have ...
        
       | dontupvoteme wrote:
       | PLEASE _do not do this_. The field is far too new and the risk
       | matrix of hallucinations are through the roof, ESPECIALLY with
       | those who have mental illness.
       | 
       | This is the sort of stuff that might get legislation passed on
       | open source models or turn public opinion against them.
       | 
       | Yes the USA's most powerful union is the AMA and yes they're the
       | reason # of doctors are low and doctor salaries are skyhigh
       | (especially compared to doctors in the rest of the world), but
       | this is not the way to address the problem, at least not yet!
        
         | omeze wrote:
         | people are already doing this on Character.ai and other popular
         | AI consumer products, whether the companies want them to or
         | not. I think it's better to accept people want something here
         | and make it good & transparent vs trying to avoid it... it's
         | like alcohol, sometimes people want a thing badly enough they
         | don't care if its bad for them
        
         | m00x wrote:
         | It's the 7B model, which is understood to be a toy model for
         | fun experimentation across the industry and even hobbyists.
         | 
         | I'm sure OP is not going to go out and treat patients with
         | this. 7B barely produces sensical sentences most of the time.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | kiratp wrote:
         | Here is another perspective.
         | 
         | The web is already FULL of bad medical information. Older folks
         | treat it as gospel already. All this technology does is make
         | both good and bad information more accessible.
         | 
         | More importantly, there is NOTHING anyone can do to stop this.
         | Nothing the US government can do will stop the proliferation of
         | AI models that do everything including giving medical advice
         | (or other things that we know it will screw up)
         | 
         | "Dr. P<hil>" is still on TV.
         | 
         | I take a pragmatic view on these things - assuming appeals to
         | morality and ethics will fail, what do we do to educate people
         | about this?
        
           | bpiche wrote:
           | Pretty cynical take. The world is already shit, what's
           | another turd on the pile?
        
             | throwing_away wrote:
             | Perhaps the right take is to take every experiment to its
             | extreme even if it's confusing.
             | 
             | People have mostly learned photos can be edited. What we
             | need are outlandish experiments and examples, and then
             | media showing off how wild this technology is.
             | 
             | Attempting to bubblewrap this tech both won't work and will
             | lead to more confusion.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | chaos_emergent wrote:
         | Not only that, but the model was trained on _172 training
         | examples_ - and the conversations aren 't remotely like the
         | therapist conversations I've had in terms of nuance or topic.
        
           | azinman2 wrote:
           | It's just Q&A. To call this a chat is very misleading.
        
           | iamarunbrahma wrote:
           | This is a toy project. Hence, large-scale collection of data
           | and pre-processing them into conversational format, also
           | removing sensitive information is not possible. I was able to
           | curate only 172 rows of data.
           | 
           | I have shared a notebook and explained detailed steps in my
           | blog - https://medium.com/@iamarunbrahma/fine-tuning-of-
           | falcon-7b-l.... If you are interested to replicate the steps
           | on medical-domain therapy chat transcripts, you are
           | definitely welcome. If you face any issues during fine-tuning
           | steps, you can connect with me on my blog. Would love to help
           | out!
        
             | thuuuomas wrote:
             | > I was able to curate only 172 rows of data
             | 
             | Skill issue - focus more on data integrity & less on HN
             | clout
        
               | SamPatt wrote:
               | OP is sharing a personal project, he's not claiming he's
               | solved the mental health crisis.
               | 
               | This is Hacker News. These types of projects are half of
               | the reason I come here, what's with the hate?
        
               | drsamuel507 wrote:
               | Oh!! So, you want every individual who post their github
               | repo on HN; to collect dataset like billions of dollars
               | funded startups and make a reliable chatbot which not a
               | single well funded startup or listed NASDAQ companies
               | could have done. I salute you.
        
             | bpiche wrote:
             | It is interesting. Sorry to pour so much cold water on the
             | topic, it's more the application than the code that people
             | have issue with.
             | 
             | I wonder if retrieval augmented generation would be
             | appropriate here too. Fast, scalable. Fine-tuning is
             | comparatively pretty expensive.
             | 
             | Thanks for sharing your code, iamarunbrahma.
        
               | iamarunbrahma wrote:
               | The purpose of this project was to showcase how can we
               | fine-tune large models on a free-tier GPU provided by
               | Colab. Hence, any individual can utilize parameter-
               | efficient fine-tuning methods to tune LLMs on domain-
               | specific datasets.
               | 
               | RAG and fine-tuning serves a slightly different purpose.
               | Fine-tuning helps LLM in learning a new task/skill such
               | as question/answering task, summarization task etc, and
               | improving reliability at producing a desired output such
               | as JSON format structure thereby reducing dependency on
               | prompt engineering.
               | 
               | On the other hand, RAG provides you with external domain-
               | specific knowledge, which one can leverage to get latest
               | information.
        
               | bpiche wrote:
               | I see, thank you for the explanation. RAG is also
               | appropriate for question/answering but I do see your
               | point. Can see myself returning to your code for
               | inspiration soon.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | Thank goodness this is the topic of the top comment. Just
         | reading the headline gave me a cold sweat in all the ways this
         | could go wrong.
         | 
         | I get people wanting to be FIRST in a space, but they seem to
         | continuously be the people least needing to be first. Will this
         | ever be something viable? maybe, but it definitely is not now.
         | Yes, it can't get there without going through the growing
         | pains, but let's work those pains out in less detrimental areas
         | first. Areas with much less fallout when it does go wrong
        
           | samtho wrote:
           | This comment just reeks of gatekeeping and ludditism.
           | 
           | How do you expect something to go from "toy" to "viable" if
           | people are not stepping up to build upon the body of
           | knowledge? A lot of people who have created innovative
           | solutions were likely, by your definition, to be among the
           | "least needed" people in a space.
           | 
           | Maybe you would benefit by trying to understand why a
           | harmless toy and proof-of-concept is so threatening.
        
       | derbOac wrote:
       | I think characterizing it as a "conversational" dataset could be
       | seen as misleading in this area. Without reading about it, I'd
       | expect it to be based on transcripts of therapy or intake
       | sessions. I don't think wiki or FAQ websites are quite the same.
        
         | iamarunbrahma wrote:
         | I have pre-processed the dataset in a generic conversational
         | format. It's not just raw scraped QnA from Wiki or FAQ's. For
         | few questions which seemed sensitive, I added recommendations
         | to consult a professional mental health care. Transcripts of
         | therapy won't be reliable here because they might contain
         | PII's, unwanted dialogues etc.
        
           | derbOac wrote:
           | So to be clear, it's good to see this kind of corpus/dataset.
           | 
           | Just from professional experience, the way patients (and
           | providers) approach discussion of issues is really different
           | from the wiki/faq type-text. It tends to be much more
           | idiosyncratic, sometimes indirect because patients don't
           | recognize patterns, and is more "raw" and unfiltered.
           | 
           | The privacy issues are huge to be sure though. I have done
           | some related research on natural language modeling and
           | understand it's difficult or impossible to separate out the
           | identifying information from the rest of it, and gets worse
           | as an information problem as size increases.
           | 
           | I just personally might refer to the nature of this type of
           | language dataset differently. I'm not sure what the right way
           | of referring to it is though. I might just drop
           | "conversational" or substitute "question" or "information" or
           | something like that. I suppose in the end it doesn't matter
           | much though -- people will figure out what it is.
        
           | kordlessagain wrote:
           | Either way, this is a good one for debate given the use is
           | assumed to require careful attention to outputs. Giving
           | someone with a mental health condition advice is fraught with
           | peril, even in a clinical setting conducted by humans with
           | vast experience.
           | 
           | The transcripts of therapy sessions would be quite helpful
           | for improved training of the model, given they contain logic
           | that may not be present in the limited dataset provided. It
           | would be a hope that these detailed interactions would
           | provide improvement into the model's problem solving capacity
           | for helping those with mental illness. As an example, for
           | certain conditions the model may use a more cautious approach
           | to investigation of the source of trauma.
           | 
           | That's not to say therapy session transcripts should be used
           | for prompt tuning after training, which exposes the data
           | directly to the inference pipeline. However, we do know fine
           | tuning the prompts with data is certainly useful for
           | grounding, at the very least.
           | 
           | I'm making the argument that using sensitive data in training
           | is exactly what makes the model better, not filtered data
           | that lacks the wide variety of "expertise" and "experience"
           | that is contained in more sensitive datasets.
           | 
           | If this were done, we can all reasonably assume that
           | "sensitive data" will make its way into the tensors of the
           | model, but the question is whether or not that information is
           | more valuable for everyone's general use compared to the risk
           | of outputting something that diminishes the value for an
           | individual.
           | 
           | I'm not proposing this is a good idea to do, but thinking
           | about it is certainly worthwhile.
        
       | freebsd709 wrote:
       | Here are some of my perspectives on how mental health chatbot can
       | be helpful:
       | 
       | Chatbots can provide immediate support to a large number of
       | people at any time, making mental health resources more
       | accessible to those who might not have easy access to traditional
       | therapy.
       | 
       | Some individuals may feel more comfortable discussing their
       | mental health with a chatbot due to the anonymity it offers,
       | allowing them to open up about sensitive topics without fear of
       | judgment.
       | 
       | Conversational AI can contribute to normalizing conversations
       | around mental health. When a widely used technology addresses
       | these topics, it can help reduce the stigma associated with
       | seeking help for mental health issues.
       | 
       | Mental health struggles can arise at any time. Having a chatbot
       | available 24/7 ensures that support is available even during non-
       | business hours or emergencies.
        
         | bpiche wrote:
         | The term 'chatbot' has become hopelessly conflated with LLMs in
         | only the last two years, but they're not the only 'chatbot'
         | frameworks in town. Nor are they even properly chatbots in the
         | sense that they can do real dialogue management, slot filling,
         | intent classification, and reliable API calling.
         | 
         | An actual chatbot framework like dialogflow or rasa would be
         | more appropriate here. Even if the conversations feel more
         | artificial, you have drastically more control over the flow of
         | the conversation and the content of the responses.
         | 
         | It's pitiful. The collective amnesia this community has.
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Surprised to see 172 items in training set. Is that sufficient
       | scale for QLoRA? I had kinda assumed one needed 1000s
        
         | mattew wrote:
         | That blew my mind as well. I would have thought a much larger
         | dataset would have been required.
        
           | antupis wrote:
           | If they are very good examples then less is more
           | https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.11206
        
             | swyx wrote:
             | arguably it takes more effort/expertise to curate those
             | examples than just pull in a bunch of data that roughly
             | loosely covers the intended surface area. bitter lesson
             | redux?
        
         | sp332 wrote:
         | Most QLoRAs only target attention layers. This gives pretty
         | good performance for minimal processing time. But this one adds
         | adapters to all linear layers. Also I'm not sure what a "step"
         | is but they ran the whole dataset through at least twice.
        
       | drsamuel507 wrote:
       | I liked this project. But, could you please tell me what should
       | we do if there is out of memory error due to memory issues?
        
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