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The Pile (dataset)

The Pile (dataset) is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Pile (dataset) rather than just read about it. In short: The Pile is an 886 GB diverse, open-source dataset of English text created to train large language models (LLMs). It was constructed by EleutherAI in 2020 and publicly released on December 31 of that year.

Key takeaways

  • The Pile (dataset) belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
  • Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
  • Connect The Pile (dataset) to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
  • Reproduce the core statement of The Pile (dataset) from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Pile is an 886 GB diverse, open-source dataset of English text created to train large language models (LLMs). It was constructed by EleutherAI in 2020 and publicly released on December 31 of that year. It is composed of 22 sub-datasets, including books, movie transcripts, and scientific papers, among other media. The Pile and Common Crawl had been, as of 2024, the two main training datasets being used to train AI models. Copyright disputes centering around use of The Pile escalated in 2023, prompting Eleuther to start removing some datasets. Eleuther partnered with various organizations to release Common Pile v0.1 in 2025 in order to have a large curated training dataset without the copyright issues.

Training on copyrighted works or derivatives The Books3 component of the dataset contains copyrighted material compiled from Bibliotik, a piracy website. In July 2023, the Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance took down Books3 through DMCA notices. Books3 was removed from the Pile before a class action lawsuit was filed in 2024 by three authors seeking damages as copies of the original dataset were still copied and available on the web. By 2024, The Pile also was taken down from its original site, though was accessible from other file sharing services. OpenSubtitles is another dataset used in the Pile that created controversy over the use of copyrighted works, this time from documentaries, movies, television and online videos. Tens of thousands of YouTube videos had their subtitles scraped directly from YouTube and included in the Pile, which YouTube argued is against its terms of service.

Common Pile v0.1 In June 2025, EleutherAI, in partnership with the Poolside, Hugging Face, and the US Library of Congress and over two dozen researchers at 14 institutions including the University of Toronto, MIT, CMU, the Vector Institute and the Allen Institute for AI, released Common Pile v0.1, a training dataset that contains only works where the licenses permit their use for training AI models. The intent was to show what is possible if ethically training AI systems while respecting copyright. They found that the process of gathering the data was time-consuming as it could not be fully automated, with humans verifying and annotating every entry, and that resulting models could achieve results that exceeded their expectations even though they were still not comparable with frontier models. The creators compared the results generated from Common Pile as similar to Llama 2, a model released two years before the creation of Common Pile. The model should provide less legal risk to those who use its output if there are fewer copyright issues with the underlying training data.

See also List of chatbots List of datasets for machine-learning research

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Pile (dataset)

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Pile (dataset) claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Pile (dataset) before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Pile (dataset) ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Pile (dataset)

In research
The Pile (dataset) appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry
Engineering practice reuses The Pile (dataset) in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom
The Pile (dataset) is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Datasets in machine learning, Large language models, Open-source artificial intelligence, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life
Look for The Pile (dataset) outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.
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How to study The Pile (dataset) in 20 minutes

  1. Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
  2. Close the page and write down what The Pile (dataset) means in your own words.
  3. Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
  4. Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
  5. Explain The Pile (dataset) out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Pile (dataset) in simple terms?

The Pile is an 886 GB diverse, open-source dataset of English text created to train large language models (LLMs). It was constructed by EleutherAI in 2020 and publicly released on December 31 of that year.

Why does The Pile (dataset) matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Pile (dataset)?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Pile (dataset).

Tags

  • Datasets in machine learning
  • Large language models
  • Open-source artificial intelligence
  • Statistical data sets

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