Pre-Trained Models

PostgresML integrates 🤗 Hugging Face Transformers to bring state-of-the-art models into the data layer. There are tens of thousands of pre-trained models with pipelines to turn raw inputs into useful results. Many state of the art deep learning architectures have been published and made available for download. You will want to browse all the models available to find the perfect solution for your dataset and task.

We'll demonstrate some of the tasks that are immediately available to users of your database upon installation: translation, sentiment analysis, summarization, question answering and text generation.

Examples

All of the tasks and models demonstrated here can be customized by passing additional arguments to the Pipeline initializer or call. You'll find additional links to documentation in the examples below.

The Hugging Face Pipeline API is exposed in Postgres via:

pgml.transform(
    task TEXT OR JSONB,      -- task name or full pipeline initializer arguments
    call JSONB,              -- additional call arguments alongside the inputs
    inputs TEXT[] OR BYTEA[] -- inputs for inference
)

This is roughly equivalent to the following Python:

import transformers

def transform(task, call, inputs):
    return transformers.pipeline(**task)(inputs, **call)

Most pipelines operate on TEXT[] inputs, but some require binary BYTEA[] data like audio classifiers. inputs can be SELECTed from tables in the database, or they may be passed in directly with the query. The output of this call is a JSONB structure that is task specific. See the Postgres JSON reference for ways to process this output dynamically.

Translation

There are thousands of different pre-trained translation models between language pairs. They generally take a single input string in the "from" language, and translate it into the "to" language as a result of the call. PostgresML transformations provide a batch interface where you can pass an array of TEXT to process in a single call for efficiency. Not all language pairs have a default task name like this example of English to French. In those cases, you'll need to specify the desired model by name. You can see how to specify a model in the next example. Because this is a batch call with 2 inputs, we'll get 2 outputs in the JSONB.

For a translation from English to French with the default pre-trained model:

• SQL
• Result

SELECT pgml.transform(
    'translation_en_to_fr',
    inputs => ARRAY[
        'Welcome to the future!',
        'Where have you been all this time?'
    ]
) AS french;

                         french                                 
------------------------------------------------------------
[
    {"translation_text": "Bienvenue à l'avenir!"},
    {"translation_text": "Où êtes-vous allé tout ce temps?"}
]

See translation documentation for more options.

Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis is one use of text-classification, but there are many others. This model returns both a label classification ["POSITIVE", "NEUTRAL", "NEGATIVE"], as well as the score where 0.0 is perfectly negative, and 1.0 is perfectly positive. This example demonstrates specifying the model to be used rather than the task. The roberta-large-mnli model specifies the task of sentiment-analysis in it's default configuration, so we may omit it from the parameters. Because this is a batch call with 2 inputs, we'll get 2 outputs in the JSONB.

• SQL
• Result

SELECT pgml.transform(
    '{"model": "roberta-large-mnli"}'::JSONB,
    inputs => ARRAY[
        'I love how amazingly simple ML has become!', 
        'I hate doing mundane and thankless tasks. ☹️'
    ]
) AS positivity;

                        positivity
------------------------------------------------------
[
    {"label": "NEUTRAL", "score": 0.8143417835235596}, 
    {"label": "NEUTRAL", "score": 0.7637073993682861}
]

See text classification documentation for more options and potential use cases beyond sentiment analysis. You'll notice the outputs are not great in this example. RoBERTa is a breakthrough model, that demonstrated just how important each particular hyperparameter is for the task and particular dataset regardless of how large your model is. We'll show how to fine tune models on your data in the next step.

Summarization

Sometimes we need all the nuanced detail, but sometimes it's nice to get to the point. Summarization can reduce a very long and complex document to a few sentences. One studied application is reducing legal bills passed by Congress into a plain english summary. Hollywood may also need some intelligence to reduce a full synopsis down to a pithy blurb for movies like Inception.

• SQL
• Result

SELECT pgml.transform(
    'summarization',
    inputs => ARRAY['
        Dominic Cobb is the foremost practitioner of the artistic science 
        of extraction, inserting oneself into a subject''s dreams to 
        obtain hidden information without the subject knowing, a concept 
        taught to him by his professor father-in-law, Dr. Stephen Miles. 
        Dom''s associates are Miles'' former students, who Dom requires 
        as he has given up being the dream architect for reasons he 
        won''t disclose. Dom''s primary associate, Arthur, believes it 
        has something to do with Dom''s deceased wife, Mal, who often 
        figures prominently and violently in those dreams, or Dom''s want 
        to "go home" (get back to his own reality, which includes two 
        young children). Dom''s work is generally in corporate espionage. 
        As the subjects don''t want the information to get into the wrong 
        hands, the clients have zero tolerance for failure. Dom is also a 
        wanted man, as many of his past subjects have learned what Dom 
        has done to them. One of those subjects, Mr. Saito, offers Dom a 
        job he can''t refuse: to take the concept one step further into 
        inception, namely planting thoughts into the subject''s dreams 
        without them knowing. Inception can fundamentally alter that 
        person as a being. Saito''s target is Robert Michael Fischer, the 
        heir to an energy business empire, which has the potential to 
        rule the world if continued on the current trajectory. Beyond the 
        complex logistics of the dream architecture of the case and some 
        unknowns concerning Fischer, the biggest obstacles in success for 
        the team become worrying about one aspect of inception which Cobb 
        fails to disclose to the other team members prior to the job, and 
        Cobb''s newest associate Ariadne''s belief that Cobb''s own 
        subconscious, especially as it relates to Mal, may be taking over 
        what happens in the dreams.
    ']
) AS result;

                                 result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[{"summary_text": "Dominic Cobb is the foremost practitioner of the 
artistic science of extraction . his associates are former students, who 
Dom requires as he has given up being the dream architect . he is also a 
wanted man, as many of his past subjects have learned what Dom has done 
to them ."}]

See summarization documentation for more options.

Question Answering

Question Answering extracts an answer from a given context. Recent progress has enabled models to also specify if the answer is present in the context at all. If you were trying to build a general question answering system, you could first turn the question into a keyword search against Wikipedia articles, and then use a model to retrieve the correct answer from the top hit. Another application would provide automated support from a knowledge base, based on the customers question.

• SQL
• Result

SELECT pgml.transform(
    'question-answering',
    inputs => ARRAY[
        '{
            "question": "Am I dreaming?",
            "context": "I got a good nights sleep last night and started a simple tutorial over my cup of morning coffee. The capabilities seem unreal, compared to what I came to expect from the simple SQL standard I studied so long ago. The answer is staring me in the face, and I feel the uncanny call from beyond the screen to check the results."
        }'
    ]
) AS answer;

                        answer
-----------------------------------------------------
{
    "end": 36, 
    "score": 0.20027603209018707, 
    "start": 0, 
    "answer": "I got a good nights sleep last night"
}

See question answering documentation for more options.

Text Generation

If you need to expand on some thoughts, you can have AI complete your sentences for you:

• SQL
• Result

SELECT pgml.transform(
    'text-generation',
    '{"num_return_sequences": 2}',
    ARRAY['Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone']
) AS result;

                                   result
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[[
    {
        "generated_text": "Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
         Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, and five for 
         the Elves.\nWhen, from all that's happening, he sees these things, 
         he says to himself,"
    }, 
    {
        "generated_text": "Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, 
        Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Eight for the
        Erogean-kings in their halls of stone -- \"and so forth;\" and 
        \"of these"
    }
]]

More

There are many different tasks and tens of thousands of state-of-the-art models available for you to explore. The possibilities are expanding every day. There can be amazing performance improvements in domain specific versions of these general tasks by fine tuning published models on your dataset. See the next section for fine tuning demonstrations.