Diffusion vs. Autoregressive Language Models: A Text Embedding Perspective
Large language model (LLM)-based embedding models, benefiting from large scale pre-training and post-training, have begun to surpass BERT and T5-based models on general-purpose text embedding tasks such as document retrieval. However, a fundamental limitation of LLM embeddings lies in the unidirectional attention used during autoregressive pre-training, which misaligns with the bidirectional nature of text embedding tasks. To this end, We propose adopting diffusion language models for text embeddings, motivated by their inherent bidirectional architecture and recent success in matching or surpassing LLMs especially on reasoning tasks. We present the first systematic study of the diffusion language embedding model, which outperforms the LLM-based embedding model by 20% on long-document retrieval, 8% on reasoning-intensive retrieval, 2% on instruction-following retrieval, and achieve competitive performance on traditional text embedding benchmarks. Our analysis verifies that bidirectional attention is crucial for encoding global context in long and complex text.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Tasks
Instruction FollowingLanguage ModelingLanguage ModellingLarge Language ModelRetrievalMethods 이 논문이 사용한 방법론
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Self-conditioned Embedding Diffusion for Text Generation
Can continuous diffusion models bring the same performance breakthrough on natural language they did for image generation? To circumvent the discrete nature of text data, we can simply project tokens in a continuous spac…
Image GenerationLanguage ModelingLanguage ModellingText GenerationAnalyzing Diffusion and Autoregressive Vision Language Models in Multimodal Embedding Space
Embedding models are a fundamental component of modern AI systems such as semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation. Recent advances in large foundation models have substantially accelerated the development of e…
Visual Question AnsweringInformation RetrievalCoDAR: Continuous Diffusion Language Models are More Powerful Than You Think
We study why continuous diffusion language models (DLMs) have lagged behind discrete diffusion approaches despite their appealing continuous generative dynamics. Under a controlled token--recovery study, we identify toke…
TESS: Text-to-Text Self-Conditioned Simplex Diffusion
Diffusion models have emerged as a powerful paradigm for generation, obtaining strong performance in various continuous domains. However, applying continuous diffusion models to natural language remains challenging due t…
Natural Language UnderstandingParaphrase GenerationQuestion GenerationQuestion-Generation+2Text-Guided Molecule Generation with Diffusion Language Model
Text-guided molecule generation is a task where molecules are generated to match specific textual descriptions. Recently, most existing SMILES-based molecule generation methods rely on an autoregressive architecture. In …
Drug DiscoveryLanguage ModelingLanguage Modellingmodel+2