The guide to instructor-base

Model
HKU NLP / instructor-base

HKU NLP / instructor-base

AI Model Milvus Integrated

Task: Embedding

Modality: Text

Similarity Metric: Cosine

License: Apache 2.0

Dimensions: 768

Max Input Tokens: 512

Price: Free

Introduction to the Instructor Model Family

The Instructor model by NKU NLP is a text embedding model fine-tuned with instructions. It creates task-specific embeddings (for classification, retrieval, clustering, text evaluation, etc.) across various domains (like science and finance) by just providing task instructions—no extra fine-tuning is needed.

Figure How the Instructor Model works

Figure: How the Instructor Model works (image by NKU NLP)

The Instructor model comes in three variations: instructor-base, instructor-xl, and instructor-large. Each version offers different levels of performance and scalability to suit various embedding needs.

Introduction to instructor-base

instructor-base is the smallest variant of the Instructor model family, designed to balance efficiency and performance. It’s ideal for tasks that require high-quality text embeddings with a lower computational footprint.

Comparing instructor-base, instructor-xl, and instructor-large

Feature	instructor-base	instructor-large	instructor-xl
Parameter Size	86 million	335 million	1.5 billion
Embedding Dimension	768	768	768
Avg. MTEB Score	55.9	58.4	58.8

How to create embeddings with instructor-base

There are two primary ways to generate vector embeddings:

PyMilvus: the Python SDK for Milvus that seamlessly integrates the instructor-base model.
Instructor library: the Python library InstructorEmbedding.

Once the vector embeddings are created, they can be stored in Zilliz Cloud (a fully managed vector database service powered by Milvus) and used for semantic similarity search. Here are four key steps:

Sign up for a Zilliz Cloud account for free.
Set up a serverless cluster and obtain the Public Endpoint and API Key.
Create a vector collection and insert your vector embeddings.
Run a semantic search on the stored embeddings.

Create embeddings via PyMilvus

from pymilvus.model.dense import InstructorEmbeddingFunction
from pymilvus import MilvusClient

ef = InstructorEmbeddingFunction(
    "hkunlp/instructor-base", 
    query_instruction="Represent the Wikipedia question for retrieving supporting documents:", 
    doc_instruction="Represent the Wikipedia document for retrieval:")

docs = [
   "Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956.",
   "Alan Turing was the first person to conduct substantial research in AI.",
   "Born in Maida Vale, London, Turing was raised in southern England."
]
# Generate embeddings for documents
docs_embeddings = ef.encode_documents(docs)

queries = ["When was artificial intelligence founded",
          "Where was Alan Turing born?"]

# Generate embeddings for queries
query_embeddings = ef.encode_queries(queries)

client = MilvusClient(
    uri=ZILLIZ_PUBLIC_ENDPOINT,
    token=ZILLIZ_API_KEY)
    
COLLECTION = "documents"
if client.has_collection(collection_name=COLLECTION):
    client.drop_collection(collection_name=COLLECTION)
client.create_collection(
    collection_name=COLLECTION,
    dimension=ef.dim,
    auto_id=True)

for doc, embedding in zip(docs, docs_embeddings):
    client.insert(COLLECTION, {"text": doc, "vector": embedding})

results = client.search(
    collection_name=COLLECTION,
    data=query_embeddings,
    consistency_level="Strong",
    output_fields=["text"])

Generate vector embeddings via InstructorEmbedding Library

from InstructorEmbedding import INSTRUCTOR
from pymilvus import MilvusClient

model = INSTRUCTOR('hkunlp/instructor-base')

docs = [["Represent the Wikipedia document for retrieval: ", "Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956."],
        ["Represent the Wikipedia document for retrieval: ", "Alan Turing was the first person to conduct substantial research in AI."],
        ["Represent the Wikipedia document for retrieval: ", "Born in Maida Vale, London, Turing was raised in southern England."]]
# Generate embeddings for documents
docs_embeddings = model.encode(docs, normalize_embeddings=True)


queries = [["Represent the Wikipedia question for retrieving supporting documents: ", "When was artificial intelligence founded"],
           ["Represent the Wikipedia question for retrieving supporting documents: ", "Where was Alan Turing born?"]]
# Generate embeddings for queries
query_embeddings = model.encode(queries, normalize_embeddings=True)

# Connect to Zilliz Cloud with Public Endpoint and API Key
client = MilvusClient(
    uri=ZILLIZ_PUBLIC_ENDPOINT,
    token=ZILLIZ_API_KEY)

COLLECTION = "documents"
if client.has_collection(collection_name=COLLECTION):
    client.drop_collection(collection_name=COLLECTION)
client.create_collection(
    collection_name=COLLECTION,
    dimension=768,
    auto_id=True)

for doc, embedding in zip(docs, docs_embeddings):
    client.insert(COLLECTION, {"text": doc, "vector": embedding})
    
results = client.search(
    collection_name=COLLECTION,
    data=query_embeddings,
    consistency_level="Strong",
    output_fields=["text"])

Introduction to the Instructor Model Family

Introduction to instructor-base

Comparing instructor-base, instructor-xl, and instructor-large

How to create embeddings with instructor-base

Create embeddings via PyMilvus

Generate vector embeddings via InstructorEmbedding Library

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