  Learning and Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) techniques have become
increasingly prevalent in high performance computing (HPC). However, these
methods depend on vast volumes of floating point data for training and
validation which need methods to share the data on a wide area network (WAN) or
to transfer it from edge devices to data centers. Data compression can be a
solution to these problems, but an in-depth understanding of how lossy
compression affects model quality is needed. Prior work largely considers a
single application or compression method. We designed a systematic methodology
for evaluating data reduction techniques for ML/AI, and we use it to perform a
very comprehensive evaluation with 17 data reduction methods on 7 ML/AI
applications to show modern lossy compression methods can achieve a 50-100x
compression ratio improvement for a 1% or less loss in quality. We identify
critical insights that guide the future use and design of lossy compressors for
ML/AI.
