HackerPapers

arXiv:2307.01850cs.LG

Self-Consuming Generative Models Go MAD

Sina Alemohammad, Josue Casco-Rodriguez, Lorenzo Luzi, Ahmed Imtiaz Humayun, Hossein Babaei, Daniel LeJeune, Ali Siahkoohi, Richard G. Baraniuk

Abstract

Seismic advances in generative AI algorithms for imagery, text, and other data types has led to the temptation to use synthetic data to train next-generation models. Repeating this process creates an autophagous (self-consuming) loop whose properties are poorly understood. We conduct a thorough analytical and empirical analysis using state-of-the-art generative image models of three families of autophagous loops that differ in how fixed or fresh real training data is available through the generations of training and in whether the samples from previous generation models have been biased to trade off data quality versus diversity. Our primary conclusion across all scenarios is that without enough fresh real data in each generation of an autophagous loop, future generative models are doomed to have their quality (precision) or diversity (recall) progressively decrease. We term this condition Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD), making analogy to mad cow disease.

arXiv comments
31 pages, 31 figures, pre-print
Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
cs.LGMachine Learning cs.AIArtificial Intelligence cs.CVComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition

On Hacker News

Linked by 6 identifiable commenters in 6 comments across 5 threads, from Jul 2023 to Sep 2026. Found in 2 HN submissions from Aug 2023 to Jan 2024. Open submission discussions.

Comments linking this paper, per year.

Discussed in comments5 threads

    • Geoffrey Hinton thinks AI is conscious. I know he's extremely accomplished and all, but as it pertains to AI as it exists now we're miles apart (not to say that he's not brilliant, but by difference of opinion). I also don't want to rehash the whole what-is-consciousness…

      wavewranglerView on HNParent context

    • This is a similar problem to what was observed in Diffusion models going "MAD" when trained on synthetic data. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.01850 . Therefore, going forward AI companies will find it increasingly difficult to get their data by scraping the. web, because web will be…

      pankajdohareyView on HNParent context

  1. [dead] 1 comment
    • >And now that AI generated content is everywhere, that means it's in the next training dataset. Except you can't train AI on AI generated content (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.01850.pdf). And no, you can't reliably detect AI generated content either…

      matteorasoView on HNParent context

    • Best to just hear it straight from the horse's mouth. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.01850

      ImprobableTruthView on HNParent context

    • Here's the actual paper that was summarized in the OP: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.01850.pdf The paper is quite approachable and worth a quick scan. In essence, reusing output from previous generations results in rather wonky results which are clearly separable from the original…

      claytonwramseyView on HNParent context

Submitted to Hacker News

Connected through shared HN threads, not inferred similarity or a recommendation.