Unveiling the Spectrum of Data Contamination in Language Model: A Survey from Detection to Remediation

Chunyuan Deng, Yilun Zhao, Yuzhao Heng, Yitong Li, Jiannan Cao, Xiangru Tang, Arman Cohan


Abstract
Data contamination has garnered increased attention in the era of Large language models (LLMs) due to the reliance on extensive internet-derived training corpora. The issue of training corpus overlap with evaluation benchmarks—referred to as contamination—has been the focus of significant recent research. This body of work aims to identify contamination, understand its impacts, and explore mitigation strategies from diverse perspectives. However, comprehensive studies that provide a clear pathway from foundational concepts to advanced insights are lacking in this nascent field. Therefore, we present the first survey in the field of data contamination. We begin by examining the effects of data contamination across various stages and forms. We then provide a detailed analysis of current contamination detection methods, categorizing them to highlight their focus, assumptions, strengths, and limitations. We also discuss mitigation strategies, offering a clear guide for future research. This survey serves as a succinct overview of the most recent advancements in data contamination research, providing a straightforward guide for the benefit of future research endeavors.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-acl.951
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2024
Month:
August
Year:
2024
Address:
Bangkok, Thailand
Editors:
Lun-Wei Ku, Andre Martins, Vivek Srikumar
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
16078–16092
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.951
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2024.findings-acl.951
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Chunyuan Deng, Yilun Zhao, Yuzhao Heng, Yitong Li, Jiannan Cao, Xiangru Tang, and Arman Cohan. 2024. Unveiling the Spectrum of Data Contamination in Language Model: A Survey from Detection to Remediation. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2024, pages 16078–16092, Bangkok, Thailand. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Unveiling the Spectrum of Data Contamination in Language Model: A Survey from Detection to Remediation (Deng et al., Findings 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.951.pdf