David Alvarez-Melis
Publications
Bridging Compute- and Data-Optimal Pretraining
Classical compute-optimal scaling laws assume an unbounded supply of fresh pretraining data, yet pretraining is increasingly entering a regime in which compute grows faster than the availability of high-quality data. We propose Compute-Data (CD) scaling laws, a unified framework that bridges compute-optimal scaling, where data scales freely with compute, and data-optimal scaling, where the corpus is fixed while compute can grow without bound. CD scaling extends classical scaling laws by introducing a token-effectiveness function, $η$, which quantifies the value of a derived token-produced, for example, through multi-epoch repetition or paraphrasing-relative to a fresh token, ranging from a perfect substitute to having no value. We fit $η$ for two data-expansion strategies, multi-epoch repetition and paraphrasing, across model sizes from 14M to 600M parameters using the Dolma-3 corpus. We find that token effectiveness is far from constant: it depends jointly on model size, the tokens-per-parameter ratio, and the amount of derived data, and it saturates as the corpus is expanded. The functional form of $η$ implies diminishing returns when substituting compute for data as either model size or data availability increases. It also partitions training into three operational regimes---compute-bound, data-bound, and model-bound---and shows that classical compute-optimal allocation is suboptimal across most practically relevant settings.
Reliable and Responsible Foundation Models: A Comprehensive Survey
Foundation models, including Large Language Models (LLMs), Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), Image Generative Models (i.e, Text-to-Image Models and Image-Editing Models), and Video Generative Models, have become essential tools with broad applications across various domains such as law, medicine, education, finance, science, and beyond. As these models see increasing real-world deployment, ensuring their reliability and responsibility has become critical for academia, industry, and government. This survey addresses the reliable and responsible development of foundation models. We explore critical issues, including bias and fairness, security and privacy, uncertainty, explainability, and distribution shift. Our research also covers model limitations, such as hallucinations, as well as methods like alignment and Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content (AIGC) detection. For each area, we review the current state of the field and outline concrete future research directions. Additionally, we discuss the intersections between these areas, highlighting their connections and shared challenges. We hope our survey fosters the development of foundation models that are not only powerful but also ethical, trustworthy, reliable, and socially responsible.