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Initiated by the University of Michigan Herbarium, VoucherVision harnesses the power of large language models (LLMs) to transform the transcription process of natural history specimen labels. Our workflow is as follows:
For ensuring accuracy and consistency, the VoucherVisionEditor serves as a quality control tool.
Thanks to all of our collaborating institutions!
The main VoucherVision tool and the VoucherVisionEditor are packaged separately. This separation ensures that lower-performance computers can still install and utilize the editor. While VoucherVision is optimized to function smoothly on virtually any modern system, maximizing its capabilities (like using LeafMachine2 label collages or running Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) prompts) mandates a GPU.
NOTE: You can absolutely run VoucherVision on computers that do not have a GPU, but the LeafMachine2 collage will run slower.
Our public demo, while lacking several quality control and reliability features found in the full VoucherVision module, provides an exciting glimpse into its capabilities. Feel free to upload your herbarium specimen and see what happens! VoucherVision Demo
pip
to install packages on your machine, or at least inside of a virtual environment.pip
into your terminal or PowerShell. If you see a list of options, you are all set. Otherwise, see
either this PIP Documentation or this help pagecd
into the directory where you want to install VoucherVision.git clone https://github.com/Gene-Weaver/VoucherVision.git
cd VoucherVision
in the terminal.git submodule update --init --recursive
A virtual environment is a tool to keep the dependencies required by different projects in separate places, by creating isolated python virtual environments for them. This avoids any conflicts between the packages that you have installed for different projects. It makes it easier to maintain different versions of packages for different projects.
For more information about virtual environments, please see Creation of virtual environments
Installation should basically be the same for Linux.
python --version
python3 -m venv .venv_VV
Or depending on your Python version...
python -m venv .venv_VV
.\.venv_VV\Scripts\activate
python --version
deactivate
cd
into VoucherVision
pip install -r requirements.txt
If you do NOT have a GPU, then you are all set. Otherwise...
Make sure that your GPU can be recognized. While in the terminal/powershell, type
python
This opens a Python script. Import torch
import torch
Make sure the GPU is found
torch.cuda.is_available()
Exit the Python instance
exit()
If torch.cuda.is_available()
returned True
, then you should be set. Otherwise, you need to make sure that your CUDA version is compatible with the PyTorch version. It's usually a good idea to leave the CUDA drivers alone and find the right PyTorch version since installing/updating CUDA can be non-trivial.
Example: If torch.cuda.is_available()
returned False
, I would first check my CUDA version. In a terminal, type
nvidia-smi
If this throws an error, then you do not have CUDA installed. Please see the troubleshooting steps below.
Otherwise, look for CUDA Version: XX.X
. In this example, we saw CUDA Version: 12.1
Go to https://pytorch.org/get-started/previous-versions/, search for 12.1
(or your CUDA version) and find the conda
installation version. There are MacOS options too.
We need a PyTorch version greater than 2.X.X. If none exists, then your CUDA version may be too old.
When I searched for 12.1
, I found this: pip install torch==2.3.1 torchvision==0.18.1 torchaudio==2.3.1 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu121
Install your matching version
Cheat sheet:
pip install torch==2.3.1 torchvision==0.18.1 torchaudio==2.3.1 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu118
pip install torch==2.3.1 torchvision==0.18.1 torchaudio==2.3.1 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu121
Verify the installation
Now we should have the right PyTorch version. Check to see if torch.cuda.is_available()
returns True
by following the same procedure as above
If your CUDA version < 11.8, then you should probably upgrade to 12.1
If you need help, please submit an inquiry in the form at LeafMachine.org
To run LLMs locally also install pip install flash-attn==1.0.9
.
error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 or greater is required. Get it with "Microsoft C++ Build Tools": https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools/
pip install flash-attn==1.0.9
should work as expected.pip install flash-attn --no-build-isolation
and use a 2.X version.To use Qwen models, install:
pip install -U "optimum"
pip install -U "git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers"
pip install "qwen-vl-utils" "auto-gptq>=0.7.1" "autoawq>=0.2.6"
and then you might need to reinstall torch
pip install "torch==2.3.1" "torchvision==0.18.1" "torchaudio==2.3.1" --index-url "https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu121"
Some bleeding edge models require dev versions of libraries or require flash-attention-2 to run efficiently. flash-attention-2 is NOT easy to install on Windows as of Fall 2024, so you need to use Linux to use flash-attention-2 AND need a GPU that supports it, which include Nvidia Ada chips and newer (NVIDIA A100, NVIDIA A6000 Ada, NVIDIA H100). Florence-2 needs flash-attention but we can get away with flash-attention-1.X instead of using flash-attention-2.
First, install Anaconda using default settings
Open the Anaconda Powershell Prompt (Windows) or the terminal (macOS/Linux)
Install Mamba in the base environment. We will use Mamba because it it much faster!
conda install mamba -n base -c conda-forge
Make sure Conda and Mamba are up to date
conda update conda
conda update mamba -c conda-forge
mamba update --all
mamba clean --all
Create a new Conda environment using Mamba
mamba create --name vouchervision python=3.10 git -c conda-forge
Activate the Conda environment
conda activate vouchervision
Use cd
to move to the directory where you want VoucherVision to live
Clone the VoucherVision repository
git clone https://github.com/Gene-Weaver/VoucherVision.git
Move into the VoucherVision home directory
cd VoucherVision
Update submodules
git submodule update --init --recursive
We can create a desktop shortcut to launch VoucherVision. In the ../VoucherVision/
directory is a file called create_desktop_shortcut.py
. In the terminal, move into the ../VoucherVision/
directory and type:
python create_desktop_shortcut.py
Or...
python3 create_desktop_shortcut.py
Follow the instructions, select where you want the shortcut to be created, then where the virtual environment is located.
Note If you ever see an error that says that a "port is not available", open run.py
in a plain text editor and change the --port
value to something different but close, like 8502. Sometimes the connection may not close properly. Also make sure that the previous terminal is closed before re-launching.
We can create a desktop shortcut to launch VoucherVision. In the ../VoucherVision/
directory is a file called create_desktop_shortcut_mac.py
. In the terminal, cd
into the ../VoucherVision/
directory and type:
python create_desktop_shortcut_mac.py
Or...
python3 create_desktop_shortcut_mac.py
Now go look in the ../VoucherVision/
directory. You will see a new file called VoucherVision.app
. Drag this file into the Applications
folder so that you can open VoucherVisionEditor just like any other app.
Note If you ever see an error that says that a "port is not available", open run.py
in a plain text editor and change the --port
value to something different but close, like 8502. Sometimes the connection may not close properly. Also make sure that the previous terminal is closed before re-launching.
NOTE: The instructions below have not been updated to reflect the new code as of Feb. 14, 2024. Stay tuned for updated instructions
cd
into the VoucherVision
directory and that your virtual environment is active (you should see .venv_VV on the command line). python run_VoucherVision.py
or depending on your Python installation:
python3 run_VoucherVision.py
run_VoucherVision.py
in a plain text editor and change the --port
value to something different but close, like 8502.VoucherVision requires access to Google Vision OCR and at least one of the following LLMs: OpenAI API, Google PaLM 2, a private instance of OpenAI through Microsoft Azure. On first startup, you will see a page with instructions on how to get these API keys. Nothing will work until you get at least the Google Vision OCR API key and one LLM API key.
Press the "Check GPU" button to see if you have a GPU available. If you know that your computer has an Nvidia GPU, but the check fails, then you need to install an different version of PyTorch in the virtual environment.
Once you have provided API keys, you can test all available prompts and LLMs by pressing the test buttons. Every combination of LLM, prompt, and LeafMachine2 collage will run on the image in the ../VoucherVision/demo/demo_images
folder. A grid will appear letting you know which combinations are working on your system.
"Run name" - Set a run name for your project. This will be the name of the new folder that contains the output files.
"Output directory" - Paste the full file path of where you would like to save the folder that will be created in step 1.
"Input images directory" - Paste the full file path of where the input images are located. This folder can only have JPG or JPEG images inside of it.
"Select an LLM" - Pick the LLM you want to use to parse the unstructured OCR text.
"Prompt Version" - Pick your prompt version. We recommend "Version 2" for production use, but you can experiment with our other prompts.
"Cropped Components" - Check the box to use LeafMachine2 collage images as the input file. LeafMachine2 can often find small handwritten text that may be missed by Google Vision OCR's text detection algorithm. But, the difference in performance is not that big. You will still get good performance without using the LeafMachine2 collage images.
"Domain Knowledge" is only used for "Version 1" prompts.
"Component Detector" sets basic LeafMachine2 parameters, but the default is likely good enough.
"Processing Options"
MICH-V-3819482.jpg
but the desired name is just 3819482
you can add MICH-V-
to the "Remove prefix from catalog number" input box. Alternatively, you can check the "Require Catalog..." box and achieve the same result. Finally you can press the start processing button.
If your institution has an enterprise instance of OpenAI's services, like at the University of Michigan, you can use Azure instead of the OpenAI servers. Your institution should be able to provide you with the required keys (there are 5 required keys for this service).
VoucherVision empowers individual institutions to customize the format of the LLM output. Using our pre-defined prompts you can transcribe the label text into 20 columns, but using our Prompt Builder you can load one of our default prompts and adjust the output to meet your needs. More instructions will come soon, but for now here are a few more details.
The Prompt Builder creates a prompt in the structure that VoucherVision expects. This information is stored as a configuration yaml file in ../VoucherVision/custom_prompts/
. We provide a few versions to get started. You can load one of our examples and then use the Prompt Builder to edit or add new columns.
Right now, the prompting instructions are not configurable, but that may change in the future.
The central JSON object shows the structure of the columns that you are requesting the LLM to create and populate with information from the specimen's labels. These will become the rows in the final xlsx file the VoucherVision generates. You can pick formatting instructions, set default values, and give detailed instructions.
Note: formatting instructions are not always followed precisely by the LLM. For example, GPT-4 is capable of granular instructions like converting ALL CAPS TEXT to sentence-case, but GPT-3.5 and PaLM 2 might not be capable of following that instruction every time (which is why we have the VoucherVisionEditor and are working to link these instructions so that humans editing the output can quickly/easily fix these errors).
The rightmost JSON object is the entire prompt structure. If you load the required_structure.yaml
prompt, you will wee the bare-bones version of what VoucherVision expects to see. All of the parts are there for a reason. The Prompt Builder UI may be a little unruly right now thanks to quirks with Streamlit, but we still recommend using the UI to build your own prompts to make sure that all of the required components are present.
Finally, we need to map columns to a VoucherVisionEditor category.
VoucherVision logs the number of input and output tokens (using tiktoken) from every call. We store the publicly listed prices of the LLM APIs in ../VoucherVision/api_cost/api_cost.yaml
. Then we do some simple math to estimage the cost of run, which is stored inside of your project's output directory ../run_name/Cost/run_name.csv
and all runs are accumulated in a csv file stored in ../VoucherVision/expense_report/expense_report.csv
. VoucherVision only manages expense_report.csv
, so if you want to split costs by month/quarter then copy and rename expense_report.csv
. Deleting expense_report.csv
will let you accumulate more stats.
This should be treated as an estimate. The true cost may be slightly different.
This is an example of the stats that we track: | run | date | api_version | total_cost | n_images | tokens_in | tokens_out | rate_in | rate_out | cost_in | cost_out |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
GPT4_test_run1 | 2023_11_05__17-44-31 | GPT_4 | 0.23931 | 2 | 6749 | 614 | 0.03 | 0.06 | 0.20247 | 0.03684 | |
GPT_3_5_test_run | 2023_11_05__17-48-48 | GPT_3_5 | 0.0189755 | 4 | 12033 | 463 | 0.0015 | 0.002 | 0.0180495 | 0.000926 | |
PALM2_test_run | 2023_11_05__17-50-35 | PALM2 | 0 | 4 | 13514 | 771 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
GPT4_test_run2 | 2023_11_05__18-49-24 | GPT_4 | 0.40962 | 4 | 12032 | 811 | 0.03 | 0.06 | 0.36096 | 0.04866 |
The sidebar in VoucherVision displays summary stats taken from expense_report.csv
.
Validation test when the OpenAI key is not provided, but keys for PaLM 2 and Azure OpenAI are present:
Validation test when all versions of the OpenAI keys are provided:
A successful GPU test:
Successful PaLM 2 test: