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In-Context Learning (ICL) enables transformer-based language models to adapt to new tasks by conditioning on demonstration examples. However, traditional example-driven in-context learning lacks explicit modules for knowledge retrieval and…
In-Context Learning (ICL) is a phenomenon where task learning occurs through a prompt sequence without the necessity of parameter updates. ICL in Multi-Headed Attention (MHA) with absolute positional embedding has been the focus of more…
In-context learning (ICL) is one of the most powerful and most unexpected capabilities to emerge in recent transformer-based large language models (LLMs). Yet the mechanisms that underlie it are poorly understood. In this paper, we…
In-context learning (ICL) exhibits dual operating modes: task learning, i.e., acquiring a new skill from in-context samples, and task retrieval, i.e., locating and activating a relevant pretrained skill. Recent theoretical work investigates…
Large language models (LLMs) exploit in-context learning (ICL) to solve tasks with only a few demonstrations, but its mechanisms are not yet well-understood. Some works suggest that LLMs only recall already learned concepts from…
We investigate in-context learning (ICL) through a meticulous experimental framework that systematically varies task complexity and model architecture. Extending beyond the linear regression baseline, we introduce Gaussian kernel regression…
In-context learning (ICL) is a cornerstone of large language model (LLM) functionality, yet its theoretical foundations remain elusive due to the complexity of transformer architectures. In particular, most existing work only theoretically…
We investigate the mechanistic underpinnings of in-context learning (ICL) in large language models by reconciling two dominant perspectives: the component-level analysis of attention heads and the holistic decomposition of ICL into Task…
State-space models (SSMs), particularly Mamba, emerge as an efficient Transformer alternative with linear complexity for long-sequence modeling. Recent empirical works demonstrate Mamba's in-context learning (ICL) capabilities competitive…
Transformers have a remarkable ability to learn and execute tasks based on examples provided within the input itself, without explicit prior training. It has been argued that this capability, known as in-context learning (ICL), is a…
Transformers exhibit In-Context Learning (ICL), where these models solve new tasks by using examples in the prompt without additional training. In our work, we identify and analyze two key components of ICL: (1) context-scaling, where model…
Understanding how large language models encode task identity from few-shot demonstrations is a central open problem in mechanistic interpretability. Prior work uses linear probing to localize task representations, reporting high…
Regression and Bayesian accounts of in-context learning (ICL) explain how demonstrations can induce predictors, while mechanistic analyses often identify compact activation directions that steer prompted behavior. However, it remains…
Large language models (LLMs) exhibit remarkable in-context learning (ICL) capabilities. However, the underlying working mechanism of ICL remains poorly understood. Recent research presents two conflicting views on ICL: One emphasizes the…
Large language models (LLM) have recently shown the extraordinary ability to perform unseen tasks based on few-shot examples provided as text, also known as in-context learning (ICL). While recent works have attempted to understand the…
In-Context Learning (ICL) enables pretrained LLMs to adapt to downstream tasks by conditioning on a small set of input-output demonstrations, without any parameter updates. Although there have been many theoretical efforts to explain how…
We perform in-depth evaluations of in-context learning (ICL) on state-of-the-art transformer, state-space, and hybrid large language models over two categories of knowledge-based ICL tasks. Using a combination of behavioral probing and…
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…
Mamba, a recently proposed linear-time sequence model, has attracted significant attention for its computational efficiency and strong empirical performance. However, a rigorous theoretical understanding of its underlying mechanisms remains…