Related papers: Transformers as Unrolled Inference in Probabilisti…
We build interpretable and lightweight transformer-like neural networks by unrolling iterative optimization algorithms that minimize graph smoothness priors -- the quadratic graph Laplacian regularizer (GLR) and the $\ell_1$-norm graph…
We introduce a constrained optimization framework for training transformers that behave like optimization descent algorithms. Specifically, we enforce layerwise descent constraints on the objective function and replace standard empirical…
Unlike conventional "black-box" transformers with classical self-attention mechanism, we build a lightweight and interpretable transformer-like neural net by unrolling a mixed-graph-based optimization algorithm to forecast traffic with…
Generic deep learning (DL) networks for image restoration like denoising and interpolation lack mathematical interpretability, require voluminous training data to tune a large parameter set, and are fragile in the face of covariate shift.…
We propose a probabilistic interpretation of exponential dot product attention of transformers and contrastive learning based off of exponential families. The attention sublayer of transformers is equivalent to a gradient ascent step of the…
Graph-based representations play a key role in machine learning. The fundamental step in these representations is the association of a graph structure to a dataset. In this paper, we propose a method that aims at finding a block sparse…
Despite the popularity of transformers in practice, their architectures are empirically designed and neither mathematically justified nor interpretable. Moreover, as indicated by many empirical studies, some components of transformer…
The Transformer architecture has revolutionized the field of sequence modeling and underpins the recent breakthroughs in large language models (LLMs). However, a comprehensive mathematical theory that explains its structure and operations…
Since its inception in "Attention Is All You Need", transformer architecture has led to revolutionary advancements in NLP. The attention layer within the transformer admits a sequence of input tokens $X$ and makes them interact through…
Large language models based on the Transformer architecture have demonstrated impressive capabilities to learn in context. However, existing theoretical studies on how this phenomenon arises are limited to the dynamics of a single layer of…
Transformers are state-of-the-art in a wide range of NLP tasks and have also been applied to many real-world products. Understanding the reliability and certainty of transformer model predictions is crucial for building trustable machine…
While attention has been empirically shown to improve model performance, it lacks a rigorous mathematical justification. This short paper establishes a novel connection between attention mechanisms and multinomial regression. Specifically,…
We investigate the ability of transformers to perform in-context reinforcement learning (ICRL), where a model must infer and execute learning algorithms from trajectory data without parameter updates. We show that a linear self-attention…
Despite their central role in the success of foundational models and large-scale language modeling, the theoretical foundations governing the operation of Transformers remain only partially understood. Contemporary research has largely…
Transformers are widely used in natural language processing, where they consistently achieve state-of-the-art performance. This is mainly due to their attention-based architecture, which allows them to model rich linguistic relations…
The quadratic complexity of softmax attention presents a major obstacle for scaling Transformers to high-resolution vision tasks. Existing linear attention variants often replace the softmax with Gaussian kernels to reduce complexity, but…
A few models have tried to tackle the link prediction problem, also known as knowledge graph completion, by embedding knowledge graphs in comparably lower dimensions. However, the state-of-the-art results are attained at the cost of…
The self-attention mechanism, a cornerstone of Transformer-based state-of-the-art deep learning architectures, is largely heuristic-driven and fundamentally challenging to interpret. Establishing a robust theoretical foundation to explain…
Transformers have proven highly effective across various applications, especially in handling sequential data such as natural languages and time series. However, transformer models often lack clear interpretability, and the success of…
Transformer-based language models have set new benchmarks across a wide range of NLP tasks, yet reliably estimating the uncertainty of their predictions remains a significant challenge. Existing uncertainty estimation (UE) techniques often…