While instructions fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs) has been proven to enhance performance across various applications, the influence of the instruction dataset mixture on LLMs has not been thoroughly explored. In this study, we classify instructions into three main types: NLP downstream tasks, coding, and general chatting, and investigate their impact on LLMs. Our findings reveal that specific types of instructions are more beneficial for particular uses, while it may cause harms to other aspects, emphasizing the importance of meticulously designing the instruction mixture to maximize model performance. This study sheds light on the instruction mixture and paves the way for future research.

In episode seven of the NVIDIA Grandmaster Series, you'll learn from four members of the Kaggle Grandmasters of NVIDIA (KGMON) team. Watch this video to learn how they used natural language processing to analyze argumentative writing elements from students and identified key phrases in patient notes from medical licensing exams. Chris has a Ph.D. in computational science and mathematics with a thesis on optimizing parallel processing. Chris is a 4x Kaggle grandmaster. Dr. Christof Henkel, a Ph.D. in mathematics with a focus on probability theory and stochastic processes and is a senior deep learning scientist at NVIDIA.