Researchers show that training on “junk data” can lead to LLM “brain rot”

On the surface, it seems obvious that training an LLM with “high quality” data will lead to better performance than feeding it any old “low quality” junk you can find. Now, a group of researchers is attempting to quantify just how much this kind of low quality data can cause an LLM to experience effects akin to human “brain rot.”

For a pre-print paper published this month, the researchers from Texas A&M, the University of Texas, and…