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Transformer-based large language models have displayed impressive in-context learning capabilities, where a pre-trained model can handle new tasks without fine-tuning by simply augmenting the query with some input-output examples from that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Hongkang Li , Meng Wang , Songtao Lu , Xiaodong Cui , Pin-Yu Chen

Large transformer models trained on diverse datasets have shown a remarkable ability to learn in-context, achieving high few-shot performance on tasks they were not explicitly trained to solve. In this paper, we study the in-context…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-27 Jonathan N. Lee , Annie Xie , Aldo Pacchiano , Yash Chandak , Chelsea Finn , Ofir Nachum , Emma Brunskill

Unsupervised approaches for learning representations invariant to common transformations are used quite often for object recognition. Learning invariances makes models more robust and practical to use in real-world scenarios. Since data…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-27 Gauri Gupta , Ritvik Kapila , Keshav Gupta , Ramesh Raskar

In-Context Learning (ICL) empowers Large Language Models (LLMs) with the ability to learn from a few examples provided in the prompt, enabling downstream generalization without the requirement for gradient updates. Despite encouragingly…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-01-28 Haitao Mao , Guangliang Liu , Yao Ma , Rongrong Wang , Kristen Johnson , Jiliang Tang

We investigate the capabilities of transformer models on relational reasoning tasks. In these tasks, models are trained on a set of strings encoding abstract relations, and are then tested out-of-distribution on data that contains symbols…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-04-17 Enric Boix-Adsera , Omid Saremi , Emmanuel Abbe , Samy Bengio , Etai Littwin , Joshua Susskind

Distribution shifts introduce uncertainty that undermines the robustness and generalization capabilities of machine learning models. While conventional wisdom suggests that learning causal-invariant representations enhances robustness to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-28 Abbavaram Gowtham Reddy , Celia Rubio-Madrigal , Rebekka Burkholz , Krikamol Muandet

This paper investigates context stickiness in in-context learning (ICL), a phenomenon where earlier examples in a prompt interfere with a transformer's ability to adapt to later tasks. Using synthetic regression tasks over linear and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Hanna Rød , Dagny Streit , Nils Valseth Selte , Justin Li

Large pretrained language models have shown surprising in-context learning (ICL) ability. With a few demonstration input-label pairs, they can predict the label for an unseen input without parameter updates. Despite the great success in…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-05-16 Damai Dai , Yutao Sun , Li Dong , Yaru Hao , Shuming Ma , Zhifang Sui , Furu Wei

Recent years have witnessed increasing interests in prompt-based learning in which models can be trained on only a few annotated instances, making them suitable in low-resource settings. When using prompt-based learning for text…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-05-11 Hongjing Li , Hanqi Yan , Yanran Li , Li Qian , Yulan He , Lin Gui

Transformer networks have seen great success in natural language processing and machine vision, where task objectives such as next word prediction and image classification benefit from nuanced context sensitivity across high-dimensional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-13 Yuxuan Li , James L. McClelland

In-context learning (ICL) allows transformer-based language models that are pre-trained on general text to quickly learn a specific task with a few "task demonstrations" without updating their parameters, significantly boosting their…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-17 Zijian Zhou , Xiaoqiang Lin , Xinyi Xu , Alok Prakash , Daniela Rus , Bryan Kian Hsiang Low

Behavioral changes in animals and humans, as a consequence of an error or a verbal instruction, can be extremely rapid. Improvement in behavioral performances are usually associated in machine learning and reinforcement learning to synaptic…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2025-03-12 Cristiano Capone , Luca Falorsi

Understanding in-context learning (ICL) capability that enables large language models (LLMs) to excel in proficiency through demonstration examples is of utmost importance. This importance stems not only from the better utilization of this…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-04 Yuxiang Zhou , Jiazheng Li , Yanzheng Xiang , Hanqi Yan , Lin Gui , Yulan He

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-15 Hongru Yang , Bhavya Kailkhura , Zhangyang Wang , Yingbin Liang

We investigate the capacity of transformers to learn algorithms involving their context while solely being trained using next token prediction. We set up Markov chains with random transition matrices and we train transformers to predict the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-07 Simon Lepage , Jeremie Mary , David Picard

Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) enjoys several benefits, such as data-efficiency and planning, by learning a model of the environment's dynamics. However, learning a global model that can generalize across different dynamics is a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-30 Kimin Lee , Younggyo Seo , Seunghyun Lee , Honglak Lee , Jinwoo Shin

Classical machine learning algorithms often assume that the data are drawn i.i.d. from a stationary probability distribution. Recently, continual learning emerged as a rapidly growing area of machine learning where this assumption is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-12 Timothée Lesort , Massimo Caccia , Irina Rish

In-context learning (ICL) allows some autoregressive models to solve tasks via next-token prediction and without needing further training. This has led to claims about these model's ability to solve (learn) unseen tasks with only a few…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Adrian de Wynter

In-context learning enables transformers to adapt to new tasks from a few examples at inference time, while grokking highlights that this generalization can emerge abruptly only after prolonged training. We study task generalization and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-15 Abdessamed Qchohi , Simone Rossi

Large-scale models trained on broad data have recently become the mainstream architecture in computer vision due to their strong generalization performance. In this paper, the main focus is on an emergent ability in large vision models,…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2023-02-02 Yuanhan Zhang , Kaiyang Zhou , Ziwei Liu