When is an Embedding Model More Promising than Another?
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
Embedders play a central role in machine learning, projecting any object into numerical representations that can, in turn, be leveraged to perform various downstream tasks. The evaluation of embedding models typically depends on domain-specific empirical approaches utilizing downstream tasks, primarily because of the lack of a standardized framework for comparison. However, acquiring adequately large and representative datasets for conducting these assessments is not always viable and can prove to be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. In this paper, we present a unified approach to evaluate embedders. First, we establish theoretical foundations for comparing embedding models, drawing upon the concepts of sufficiency and informativeness. We then leverage these concepts to devise a tractable comparison criterion (information sufficiency), leading to a task-agnostic and self-supervised ranking procedure. We demonstrate experimentally that our approach aligns closely with the capability of embedding models to facilitate various downstream tasks in both natural language processing and molecular biology. This effectively offers practitioners a valuable tool for prioritizing model trials.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 54 of its 111 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Jun 2024.
Builds on
54 of 111 references.
References · 54
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38 more
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50 most cited of 54 All 54 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 4.
7 papers.
- 2025Towards an Explainable Comparison and Alignment of Feature Embeddingscited by 9
- 2025From Topology to Retrieval: Decoding Embedding Spaces with Unified Signaturescited by 4
- 2026KODA: Contrastive Representation Comparison and Alignment for Vision-Language Foundation Modelscited by 2
- 2025Statistical Deficiency for Task Inclusion Estimationcited by 1
- 2026Layer-wise Representation Dynamics: An Empirical Investigation Across Embedders and Base LLMscited by 1
- 2026Embedding World Knowledge into Tabular Models: Towards Best Practices for Embedding Pipeline Designcited by 0
- 2026FLARE: Task-agnostic embedding model evaluation through a normalization processcited by 0
- 2026KODA: Contrastive Representation Comparison and Alignment for Vision-Language Foundation Models2 Jun 2026
- 2026Layer-wise Representation Dynamics: An Empirical Investigation Across Embedders and Base LLMs12 May 2026
- 2026FLARE: Task-agnostic embedding model evaluation through a normalization process19 Apr 2026
- 2026Embedding World Knowledge into Tabular Models: Towards Best Practices for Embedding Pipeline Design18 Mar 2026
- 2025From Topology to Retrieval: Decoding Embedding Spaces with Unified Signatures27 Nov 2025
- 2025Towards an Explainable Comparison and Alignment of Feature Embeddings6 Jun 2025
- 2025Statistical Deficiency for Task Inclusion Estimation7 Mar 2025