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Large-scale neural language models exhibit a remarkable capacity for in-context learning (ICL): they can infer novel functions from datasets provided as input. Most of our current understanding of when and how ICL arises comes from LMs…
Recent work has demonstrated that transformers and linear attention models can perform in-context learning (ICL) on simple function classes, such as linear regression. In this paper, we empirically study how these two attention mechanisms…
In-context learning (ICL) is a hallmark capability of transformers, through which trained models learn to adapt to new tasks by leveraging information from the input context. Prior work has shown that ICL emerges in transformers due to the…
Transformer-based multimodal large language models often exhibit in-context learning (ICL) abilities. Motivated by this phenomenon, we ask: how do transformers learn to associate information across modalities from in-context examples? We…
In-context reinforcement learning (ICRL) studies agents that, after pretraining, adapt to new tasks by conditioning on additional context without parameter updates. Existing theoretical analyses of ICRL largely rely on linear attention,…
Understanding the training dynamics of transformers is important to explain the impressive capabilities behind large language models. In this work, we study the dynamics of training a shallow transformer on a task of recognizing…
While attention-based models have demonstrated the remarkable ability of in-context learning (ICL), the theoretical understanding of how these models acquired this ability through gradient descent training is still preliminary. Towards…
The transformer's remarkable ability to perform in-context learning (ICL) has sparked a wide range of studies designed to understand its strengths and limitations. However, a theoretical understanding of when ICL can and cannot generalize…
In-context learning (ICL), a property demonstrated by transformer-based sequence models, refers to the automatic inference of an input-output mapping based on examples of the mapping provided as context. ICL requires no explicit learning,…
Large language models (LLMs) are known for their exceptional performance in natural language processing, making them highly effective in many human life-related or even job-related tasks. The attention mechanism in the Transformer…
Large language models have the ability to generate text that mimics patterns in their inputs. We introduce a simple Markov Chain sequence modeling task in order to study how this in-context learning (ICL) capability emerges. In our setting,…
Large language models (LLMs) like transformers demonstrate impressive in-context learning (ICL) capabilities, allowing them to make predictions for new tasks based on prompt exemplars without parameter updates. While existing ICL theories…
In-context learning (ICL) is a remarkable capability of pretrained transformers that allows models to generalize to unseen tasks after seeing only a few examples. We investigate empirically the conditions necessary on the pretraining…
The emergence of In-Context Learning (ICL) in LLMs remains a remarkable phenomenon that is partially understood. To explain ICL, recent studies have created theoretical connections to Gradient Descent (GD). We ask, do such connections hold…
Transformer-based language models exhibit In-Context Learning (ICL), where predictions are made adaptively based on context. While prior work links induction heads to ICL through a sudden jump in accuracy, this can only account for ICL when…
In-context learning (ICL) has garnered significant attention for its ability to grasp functions/tasks from demonstrations. Recent studies suggest the presence of a latent task/function vector in LLMs during ICL. Merullo et al. (2024) showed…
In-context learning (ICL) has become a prominent paradigm to rapidly customize LLMs to new tasks without fine-tuning. However, despite the empirical evidence of its usefulness, we still do not truly understand how ICL works. In this paper,…
Transformers have become the dominant architecture for natural language processing. Part of their success is owed to a remarkable capability known as in-context learning (ICL): they can acquire and apply novel associations solely from their…
In this work, we explore the mechanism of in-context learning (ICL) on out-of-distribution (OOD) tasks that were not encountered during training. To achieve this, we conduct synthetic experiments where the objective is to learn OOD…
We study the in-context learning (ICL) capabilities of pretrained Transformers in the setting of nonlinear regression. Specifically, we focus on a random Transformer with a nonlinear MLP head where the first layer is randomly initialized…