Large Language Diffusion Models

Autoregressive models (ARMs) are widely regarded as the cornerstone of large language models (LLMs). We challenge this notion by introducing LLaDA, a diffusion model trained from scratch under the pre-training and supervised fine-tuning (SFT) paradigm. LLaDA models distributions through a forward data masking process and a reverse process, parameterized by a vanilla Transformer to predict masked tokens. By optimizing a likelihood bound, it provides a principled generative approach for probabilistic inference. Across extensive benchmarks, LLaDA demonstrates strong scalability, outperforming our self-constructed ARM baselines. Remarkably, LLaDA 8B is competitive with strong LLMs like LLaMA3 8B in in-context learning and, after SFT, exhibits impressive instruction-following abilities in case studies such as multi-turn dialogue. Moreover, LLaDA addresses the reversal curse, surpassing GPT-4o in a reversal poem completion task. Our findings establish diffusion models as a viable and promising alternative to ARMs, challenging the assumption that key LLM capabilities discussed above are inherently tied to ARMs. — Read More

Project page and codes: this https URL.

#nlp

The Widespread Adoption of Large Language Model-Assisted Writing Across Society

he recent advances in large language models (LLMs) attracted significant public and policymaker interest in its adoption patterns. In this paper, we systematically analyze LLM-assisted writing across four domains-consumer complaints, corporate communications, job postings, and international organization press releases-from January 2022 to September 2024. Our dataset includes 687,241 consumer complaints, 537,413 corporate press releases, 304.3 million job postings, and 15,919 United Nations (UN) press releases. Using a robust population-level statistical framework, we find that LLM usage surged following the release of ChatGPT in November 2022. By late 2024, roughly 18% of financial consumer complaint text appears to be LLM-assisted, with adoption patterns spread broadly across regions and slightly higher in urban areas. For corporate press releases, up to 24% of the text is attributable to LLMs. In job postings, LLM-assisted writing accounts for just below 10% in small firms, and is even more common among younger firms. UN press releases also reflect this trend, with nearly 14% of content being generated or modified by LLMs. Although adoption climbed rapidly post-ChatGPT, growth appears to have stabilized by 2024, reflecting either saturation in LLM adoption or increasing subtlety of more advanced models. Our study shows the emergence of a new reality in which firms, consumers and even international organizations substantially rely on generative AI for communications. — Read More

#strategy

Amazon is reportedly developing its own AI ‘reasoning’ model

According to Business Insider, Amazon is developing an AI model that incorporates advanced “reasoning” capabilities, similar to models like OpenAI’s o3-mini and Chinese AI lab DeepSeek’s R1. The model may launch as soon as June under Amazon’s Nova brand, which the company introduced at its re:Invent developer conference last year. — Read More

#big7