Waleed Malik

Shuqi Lu, Di He, Chenyan Xiong et al.

Dense retrieval requires high-quality text sequence embeddings to support effective search in the representation space. Autoencoder-based language models are appealing in dense retrieval as they train the encoder to output high-quality embedding that can reconstruct the input texts. However, in this paper, we provide theoretical analyses and show empirically that an autoencoder language model with a low reconstruction loss may not provide good sequence representations because the decoder may take shortcuts by exploiting language patterns. To address this, we propose a new self-learning method that pre-trains the autoencoder using a \textit{weak} decoder, with restricted capacity and attention flexibility to push the encoder to provide better text representations. Our experiments on web search, news recommendation, and open domain question answering show that our pre-trained model significantly boosts the effectiveness and few-shot ability of dense retrieval models. Our code is available at https://github.com/microsoft/SEED-Encoder/.

Jingying Zeng, Richard Huang, Waleed Malik et al.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming the way people generate, explore, and engage with content. We study how we can develop LLM applications for online social networks. Despite LLMs' successes in other domains, it is challenging to develop LLM-based products for social networks for numerous reasons, and it has been relatively under-reported in the research community. We categorize LLM applications for social networks into three categories. First is knowledge tasks where users want to find new knowledge and information, such as search and question-answering. Second is entertainment tasks where users want to consume interesting content, such as getting entertaining notification content. Third is foundational tasks that need to be done to moderate and operate the social networks, such as content annotation and LLM monitoring. For each task, we share the challenges we found, solutions we developed, and lessons we learned. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive paper about developing LLM applications for social networks.

Jingying Zeng, Jaewon Yang, Waleed Malik et al.

While generative AI excels in content generation, it does not always increase user engagement. This can be attributed to two main factors. First, generative AI generates content without incorporating explicit or implicit feedback about user interactions. Even if the generated content seems to be more informative or well-written, it does not necessarily lead to an increase in user activities, such as clicks. Second, there is a concern with the quality of the content generative AI produces, which often lacks the distinctiveness and authenticity that human-created content possesses. These two factors can lead to content that fails to meet specific needs and preferences of users, ultimately reducing its potential to be engaging. This paper presents a generic framework of how to improve user engagement with generative AI by leveraging user feedback. Our solutions employ rejection sampling, a technique used in reinforcement learning, to boost engagement metrics. We leveraged the framework in the context of email notification subject lines generation for an online social network, and achieved significant engagement metric lift including +1% Session and +0.4% Weekly Active Users. We believe our work offers a universal framework that enhances user engagement with generative AI, particularly when standard generative AI reaches its limits in terms of enhancing content to be more captivating. To the best of our knowledge, this represents an early milestone in the industry's successful use of generative AI to enhance user engagement.