Improving Efficiency and Robustness of Transformer-based Information Retrieval Systems

This tutorial focuses on both theoretical and practical aspects of improving the efficiency and robustness of transformer-based approaches, so that these can be effectively used in practical, high-scale, and high-volume information retrieval (IR) scenarios. The tutorial is inspired and informed by our work and experience while working with massive narrative datasets (8.5 billion medical notes), and by our basic research and academic experience with transformer-based IR tasks. Additionally, the tutorial focuses on techniques for making transformer-based IR robust against adversarial (AI) exploitation. This is a recent concern in the IR domain that we needed to take into concern, and we want to want to share some of the lessons learned and applicable principles with our audience. Finally, an important, if not critical, element of this tutorial is its focus on didacticism - delivering tutorial content in a clear, intuitive, plain-speak fashion. Transformers are a challenging subject, and, through our teaching experience, we observed a great value and a great need to explain all relevant aspects of this architecture and related principles in the most straightforward, precise, and intuitive manner. That is the defining style of our proposed tutorial.