Large Language Models

Abstract of publication

Dictionary definitions are historically the arbitrator of what words mean, but this primacy has come under threat by recent progress in NLP, including word embeddings and generative models like ChatGPT. We present an exploratory
study of the degree of alignment between word definitions from classical dictionaries and these newer computational artifacts. Specifically, we compare definitions from three published dictionaries to those generated from variants of ChatGPT. We show that (i) definitions from different traditional dictionaries exhibit more surface form similarity than do model-generated definitions, (ii) that the ChatGPT definitions are highly accurate, comparable to traditional dictionaries, and (iii) ChatGPT-based embedding definitions retain their accuracy even on low frequency words, much better than GloVE and FastText word embeddings.

Yunting Yin, Steven Skiena, Department of Computer Science, Stony Brook University

Authors

Yunting Yin : Departement of computer science, Stony brook university
Steven Skiena : Departement of computer science, Stony brook university

Reference

2311.06362-word-definitions-form-large-language-models