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Language models are generally trained on short, truncated input sequences, which limits their ability to use discourse-level information present in long-range context to improve their predictions. Recent efforts to improve the efficiency of…
We study a novel language model architecture that is capable of scaling test-time computation by implicitly reasoning in latent space. Our model works by iterating a recurrent block, thereby unrolling to arbitrary depth at test-time. This…
Large language models have demonstrated remarkable capabilities across many tasks, yet face significant challenges when dealing with recursive reasoning problems, those requiring the resolution of nested hierarchical structures. While prior…
Deep learning sequence models have led to a marked increase in performance for a range of Natural Language Processing tasks, but it remains an open question whether they are able to induce proper hierarchical generalizations for…
Large Language Models achieve next-token prediction by transporting a vectorized piece of text (prompt) across an accompanying embedding space under the action of successive transformer layers. The resulting high-dimensional trajectories…
Generative seq2seq dialogue systems are trained to predict the next word in dialogues that have already occurred. They can learn from large unlabeled conversation datasets, build a deeper understanding of conversational context, and…
While end-to-end learning with fully differentiable models has enabled tremendous success in natural language process (NLP) and machine learning, there have been significant recent interests in learning with latent discrete structures to…
Large Language Models have become the core architecture upon which most modern natural language processing (NLP) systems build. These models can consistently deliver impressive accuracy and robustness across tasks and domains, but their…
Because language is creative, any reasonable language model must generalize, deciding what to say in novel contexts by using information from similar contexts. But what about contexts that are not novel but merely infrequent? In…
Linearization has emerged as a strategy for developing efficient language models (LMs). Starting from an existing Transformer-based LM, linearization replaces the attention component with computationally efficient subquadratic \textit{token…
Interpreting complex machine learning models is a critical challenge, especially for tabular data where model transparency is paramount. Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME) has been a very popular framework for…
Transformers have significantly advanced the field of natural language processing, but comprehending their internal mechanisms remains a challenge. In this paper, we introduce a novel geometric perspective that elucidates the inner…
Layer-wise normalization (LN) is an essential component of virtually all transformer-based large language models. While its effects on training stability are well documented, its role at inference time is poorly understood. Additionally, LN…
High-dimensional token embeddings underpin Large Language Models (LLMs), as they can capture subtle semantic information and significantly enhance the modelling of complex language patterns. However, this high dimensionality also introduces…
Recent probing studies reveal that large language models exhibit linear subspaces that separate true from false statements, yet the mechanism behind their emergence is unclear. We introduce a transparent, one-layer transformer toy model…
Understanding how language model performance varies with scale is critical to benchmark and algorithm development. Scaling laws are one approach to building this understanding, but the requirement of training models across many different…
We study how a one-layer attention-only transformer develops relevant structures while learning to sort lists of numbers. At the end of training, the model organizes its attention heads in two main modes that we refer to as…
To process novel sentences, language models (LMs) must generalize compositionally -- combine familiar elements in new ways. What aspects of a model's structure promote compositional generalization? Focusing on transformers, we test the…
How and where does a transformer notice that a sentence has gone semantically off the rails? To explore this question, we evaluated the causal language model (phi-2) using a carefully curated corpus, with sentences that concluded plausibly…
Large language models have recently achieved state of the art performance across a wide variety of natural language tasks. Meanwhile, the size of these models and their latency have significantly increased, which makes their usage costly,…