Alibaba’s ‘ZeroSearch’ lets AI learn to google itself — slashing training costs by 88 percent

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Researchers at Alibaba Group have developed a novel approach that could dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of training AI systems to search for information, eliminating the need for expensive commercial search engine APIs altogether. The technique, called “ZeroSearch,” allows large language models (LLMs) to develop advanced search capabilities through a simulation approach rather than interacting with real search engines during the training process. This innovation could save companies significant API expenses while offering better control over how AI systems learn to retrieve information. “Reinforcement learning [RL] training requires frequent rollouts, potentially involving hundreds of thousands of search requests, which incur substantial API expenses and severely constrain scalability,” write the researchers in their paper published on arXiv this ... Read full article.