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Binary Tokenization problem proven computationally hard, new approximation algorithms developed

Researchers have established the computational hardness of the Binary Tokenization problem, proving that no polynomial-time approximation algorithm can achieve a factor of $n^{1-\varepsilon}$ for any $\varepsilon > 0$ unless P=NP. To address this, they developed a $(\gamma, \gamma)$-bicriteria approximation algorithm with $\gamma = \sqrt{M}\log n$, which outputs a vocabulary of size at most $\gamma K$ and uses at most $\gamma$ times the optimal number of tokens for a budget $K$. Additionally, a bicriteria approximation algorithm was designed for a storage-budget variant, achieving $(O(\log n\log B), O(\log n\log B))$ approximation for a budget $B$. AI

IMPACT This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of tokenization, a fundamental component in many AI models, by establishing hardness results and developing approximation algorithms.

RANK_REASON Academic paper detailing theoretical computer science research on approximation algorithms. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=0.7]

Read on arXiv cs.AI →

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Binary Tokenization problem proven computationally hard, new approximation algorithms developed

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Academic paper detailing theoretical computer science research on approximation algorithms. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=0.7]
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COVERAGE [1]

  1. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Atieh Bastan, Xiaoling He, A. Pavan, N. V. Vinodchandran ·

    Tokenization: Hardness and Bicriteria Approximation Algorithms

    arXiv:2611.15074v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study Binary Tokenization: given a corpus of binary strings over $\{0,1\}$ and a vocabulary budget $K$, select at most $K$ substrings (called vocabulary) to minimize the total number of tokens needed to represent the corpus. Th…