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In-context learning (ICL) in large language models (LLMs) is a striking phenomenon, yet its underlying mechanisms remain only partially understood. Previous work connects linear self-attention (LSA) to gradient descent (GD), this connection…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-05 Shifeng Xie , Rui Yuan , Simone Rossi , Thomas Hannagan

While in-context learning (ICL) has achieved remarkable success in natural language and vision domains, its theoretical understanding-particularly in the context of structured geometric data-remains unexplored. This paper initiates a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Zhaiming Shen , Alexander Hsu , Rongjie Lai , Wenjing Liao

Fine-tuning and in-context learning (ICL) are two prevalent methods in imbuing large language models with task-specific knowledge. It is commonly believed that fine-tuning can surpass ICL given sufficient training samples as it allows the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Qingyu Yin , Xuzheng He , Luoao Deng , Chak Tou Leong , Fan Wang , Yanzhao Yan , Xiaoyu Shen , Qiang Zhang

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-12 Kevin Christian Wibisono , Yixin Wang

In-context learning (ICL) is a recent advancement in the capabilities of large language models (LLMs). This feature allows users to perform a new task without updating the model. Concretely, users can address tasks during the inference time…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-07-10 Wai Man Si , Michael Backes , Yang Zhang

We investigate whether chemical processes can perform in-context learning (ICL), a mode of computation typically associated with transformer architectures. ICL allows a system to infer task-specific rules from a sequence of examples without…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2026-01-13 Carlos Floyd , Hector Manuel Lopez Rios , Aaron R. Dinner , Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan

Large language models (LLMs) are powerful models that can learn concepts at the inference stage via in-context learning (ICL). While theoretical studies, e.g., \cite{zhang2023trained}, attempt to explain the mechanism of ICL, they assume…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-19 Yue Xing , Xiaofeng Lin , Chenheng Xu , Namjoon Suh , Qifan Song , Guang Cheng

In-context learning (ICL) has revolutionized the capabilities of transformer models in NLP. In our project, we extend the understanding of the mechanisms underpinning ICL by exploring whether transformers can learn from sequential,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-22 Ryan Campbell , Emma Guo , Evan Hu , Reya Vir , Ethan Hsiao

Shortcut learning refers to the phenomenon where models employ simple, non-robust decision rules in practical tasks, which hinders their generalization and robustness. With the rapid development of large language models (LLMs) in recent…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-02 Rui Song , Yingji Li , Lida Shi , Fausto Giunchiglia , Hao Xu

Transformer models exhibit remarkable in-context learning (ICL), adapting to novel tasks from examples within their context, yet the underlying mechanisms remain largely mysterious. Here, we provide an exact analytical characterization of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Nischal Mainali , Lucas Teixeira

In-Context Learning (ICL) is a significant paradigm for Large Multimodal Models (LMMs), using a few in-context demonstrations (ICDs) for new task adaptation. However, its performance is sensitive to demonstration configurations and…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Xiaoyu Li , Yuhang Liu , Xuanshuo Kang , Zheng Luo , Fangqi Lou , Xiaohua Wu , Zihan Xiong

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable proficiency in in-context learning (ICL), where models adapt to new tasks through example-based prompts without requiring parameter updates. However, understanding how tasks are…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Baturay Saglam , Xinyang Hu , Zhuoran Yang , Dionysis Kalogerias , Amin Karbasi

In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive study of In-Context Learning (ICL) by addressing several open questions: (a) What type of ICL estimator is learned by large language models? (b) What is a proper performance metric for ICL and what…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-10-11 Yufeng Zhang , Fengzhuo Zhang , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang

Recently, In-context Learning (ICL) has become a significant inference paradigm in Large Multimodal Models (LMMs), utilizing a few in-context demonstrations (ICDs) to prompt LMMs for new tasks. However, the synergistic effects in multimodal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Yuchu Jiang , Jiale Fu , Chenduo Hao , Xinting Hu , Yingzhe Peng , Xin Geng , Xu Yang

Humans spontaneously use increasingly efficient language as interactions progress, by adapting and forming ad-hoc conventions. This phenomenon has been studied extensively using reference games, showing properties of human language that go…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-08-05 Yilun Hua , Yoav Artzi

In-Context Learning (ICL) empowers Large Language Models (LLMs) for rapid task adaptation without Fine-Tuning (FT), but its reliance on demonstration selection remains a critical challenge. While many-shot ICL shows promising performance…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Jianfei Zhang , Bei Li , Jun Bai , Rumei Li , Yanmeng Wang , Chenghua Lin , Wenge Rong

In-context learning (ICL) refers to the process of adding a small number of localized examples from a training set of labelled data to an LLM's prompt with an objective to effectively control the generative process seeking to improve the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-01-22 Manish Chandra , Debasis Ganguly , Iadh Ounis

In-context learning (ICL) refers to the ability of a model to condition on a few in-context demonstrations (input-output examples of the underlying task) to generate the answer for a new query input, without updating parameters. Despite the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-01 Yongqiang Chen , Binghui Xie , Kaiwen Zhou , Bo Han , Yatao Bian , James Cheng

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-09-19 Samet Demir , Zafer Dogan

In the real world, knowledge often exists in a multimodal and heterogeneous form. Addressing the task of question answering with hybrid data types, including text, tables, and images, is a challenging task (MMHQA). Recently, with the rise…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-09-12 Weihao Liu , Fangyu Lei , Tongxu Luo , Jiahe Lei , Shizhu He , Jun Zhao , Kang Liu