FilBench: Can LLMs Understand and Generate Filipino?

AI Impact Summary

FilBench provides a structured evaluation of LLM performance across key linguistic tasks – cultural knowledge, NLP, reading comprehension, and generation – specifically for Tagalog, Filipino, and Cebuano. The findings highlight the potential of region-specific LLMs like SEA-LION and SeaLLM, which, through fine-tuning, can approach GPT-4 performance while remaining cost-effective, particularly given the unique constraints of the Philippine market. This research offers a practical benchmark for assessing and improving LLM capabilities within the Philippine language ecosystem.