Challenges and Opportunities of Using Transformer-Based Multi-Task
  Learning in NLP Through ML Lifecycle: A Survey
Lovre Torbarina Tin Ferkovic Lukasz Roguski Velimir Mihelcic Bruno Sarlija Zeljko Kraljevic
The increasing adoption of natural language processing (NLP) models across
industries has led to practitioners' need for machine learning systems to
handle these models efficiently, from training to serving them in production.
However, training, deploying, and updating multiple models can be complex,
costly, and time-consuming, mainly when using transformer-based pre-trained
language models. Multi-Task Learning (MTL) has emerged as a promising approach
to improve efficiency and performance through joint training, rather than
training separate models. Motivated by this, we first provide an overview of
transformer-based MTL approaches in NLP. Then, we discuss the challenges and
opportunities of using MTL approaches throughout typical ML lifecycle phases,
specifically focusing on the challenges related to data engineering, model
development, deployment, and monitoring phases. This survey focuses on
transformer-based MTL architectures and, to the best of our knowledge, is novel
in that it systematically analyses how transformer-based MTL in NLP fits into
ML lifecycle phases. Furthermore, we motivate research on the connection
between MTL and continual learning (CL), as this area remains unexplored. We
believe it would be practical to have a model that can handle both MTL and CL,
as this would make it easier to periodically re-train the model, update it due
to distribution shifts, and add new capabilities to meet real-world
requirements.