@inproceedings{feng-etal-2026-data,
title = "Data Swarms: Optimizable Generation of Synthetic Evaluation Data",
author = "Feng, Shangbin and
Wang, Yike and
Shi, Weijia and
Tsvetkov, Yulia",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.589/",
pages = "12139--12157",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "We propose Data Swarms, an algorithm to optimize the generation of synthetic evaluation data and advance quantitative desiderata of LLM evaluation. We first train a swarm of initial data generators using existing data, and define various evaluation objectives to reflect the desired properties of evaluation (e.g., generate more difficult problems for the evaluated models) and quantitatively evaluate data generators. We then employ particle swarm optimization to optimize the swarm of data generators, where they collaboratively search through the model parameter space to find new generators that advance these objectives. We further extend it to Adversarial Swarms, where the data generator swarm generates harder data while the test taker model swarm learns from such data, co-evolving dynamically for better data and models simultaneously. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Data Swarms outperforms eight data generation baselines across five evaluation objectives, while Adversarial Swarms produce more robust learning of synthetic data and stronger generalization. Further analysis reveals that Data Swarms successfully optimizes compositions of multiple evaluation objectives and generalizes to new off-the-shelf LLMs, unseen at optimization time."
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Data Swarms: Optimizable Generation of Synthetic Evaluation Data
%A Feng, Shangbin
%A Wang, Yike
%A Shi, Weijia
%A Tsvetkov, Yulia
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F feng-etal-2026-data
%X We propose Data Swarms, an algorithm to optimize the generation of synthetic evaluation data and advance quantitative desiderata of LLM evaluation. We first train a swarm of initial data generators using existing data, and define various evaluation objectives to reflect the desired properties of evaluation (e.g., generate more difficult problems for the evaluated models) and quantitatively evaluate data generators. We then employ particle swarm optimization to optimize the swarm of data generators, where they collaboratively search through the model parameter space to find new generators that advance these objectives. We further extend it to Adversarial Swarms, where the data generator swarm generates harder data while the test taker model swarm learns from such data, co-evolving dynamically for better data and models simultaneously. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Data Swarms outperforms eight data generation baselines across five evaluation objectives, while Adversarial Swarms produce more robust learning of synthetic data and stronger generalization. Further analysis reveals that Data Swarms successfully optimizes compositions of multiple evaluation objectives and generalizes to new off-the-shelf LLMs, unseen at optimization time.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.589/
%P 12139-12157
Markdown (Informal)
[Data Swarms: Optimizable Generation of Synthetic Evaluation Data](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.589/) (Feng et al., Findings 2026)
ACL