Related papers: Convergence and Divergence of Language Models unde…
Just like the previous generation of task-tuned models, large language models (LLMs) that are adapted to tasks via prompt-based methods like in-context-learning (ICL) perform well in some setups but not in others. This lack of consistency…
In this work, we review research studies that combine Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Large Language Models (LLMs), two areas that owe their momentum to the development of deep neural networks. We propose a novel taxonomy of three main…
We study the probabilistic modeling performed by Autoregressive Large Language Models (LLMs) through the angle of time directionality, addressing a question first raised in (Shannon, 1951). For large enough models, we empirically find a…
Large Language Models (LLMs) are pretrained on extensive multilingual corpora to acquire both language-specific cultural knowledge and general knowledge. Ideally, while LLMs should provide consistent responses to culture-independent…
In-context learning (ICL) for text classification, which uses a few input-label demonstrations to describe a task, has demonstrated impressive performance on large language models (LLMs). However, the selection of in-context demonstrations…
Estimating the Kullback--Leibler (KL) divergence between language models has many applications, e.g., reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), interpretability, and knowledge distillation. However, computing the exact KL…
Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved unprecedented performance on many complex tasks, being able, for example, to answer questions on almost any topic. However, they struggle with other simple tasks, such as counting the occurrences…
Pretraining large language models effectively requires strategic data selection, blending and ordering. However, key details about data mixtures especially their scalability to longer token horizons and larger model sizes remain…
Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionised the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and have achieved state-of-the-art performance in practically every task in this field. However, the prevalent approach used in text generation,…
What makes a difference in the post-training of LLMs? We investigate the training patterns of different layers in large language models (LLMs) through the lens of the gradient. We are specifically interested in how fast vs. slow thinking…
Knowledge distillation (KD) is an effective model compression method that can transfer the internal capabilities of large language models (LLMs) to smaller ones. However, the multi-modal probability distribution predicted by teacher LLMs…
Without any explicit cross-lingual training data, multilingual language models can achieve cross-lingual transfer. One common way to improve this transfer is to perform realignment steps before fine-tuning, i.e., to train the model to build…
Reasoning failures in large language models (LLMs) are typically measured only at the end of a generation, yet many failures manifest as a process-level breakdown: the model "loses the thread" mid-reasoning. We study whether such breakdowns…
This thesis investigates two key phenomena in large language models (LLMs): in-context learning (ICL) and model collapse. We study ICL in a linear transformer with tied weights trained on linear regression tasks, and show that minimising…
Recent studies suggest that very small language models (SLMs) can generate surprisingly coherent text when trained on simplified, child-directed corpora such as TinyStories. These findings have been interpreted as evidence that readability…
Evaluating consistency in large language models (LLMs) is crucial for ensuring reliability, particularly in complex, multi-step interactions between humans and LLMs. Traditional self-consistency methods often miss subtle semantic changes in…
In this study, we delve into the dynamic landscape of machine learning research evolution. Initially, through the utilization of Latent Dirichlet Allocation, we discern pivotal themes and fundamental concepts that have emerged within the…
Language models (LMs) automatically learn word embeddings during pre-training on language corpora. Although word embeddings are usually interpreted as feature vectors for individual words, their roles in language model generation remain…
Steerability, or the ability of large language models (LLMs) to adapt outputs to align with diverse community-specific norms, perspectives, and communication styles, is critical for real-world applications but remains under-evaluated. We…
We analyze reasoning in language models during task-specific fine-tuning and draws parallel between reasoning tokens--intermediate steps generated while solving problem and the human working memory. Drawing from cognitive science, we align…