English
Related papers

Related papers: Model Collapse as Cultural Evolution

200 papers

Large language models increasingly rely on synthetic data due to human-written content scarcity, yet recursive training on model-generated outputs leads to model collapse, a degenerative process threatening factual reliability. We define…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Figarri Keisha , Zekun Wu , Ze Wang , Adriano Koshiyama , Philip Treleaven

Scaling large language models (LLMs) leads to an emergent capacity to learn in-context from example demonstrations. Despite progress, theoretical understanding of this phenomenon remains limited. We argue that in-context learning relies on…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-03-15 Michael Hahn , Navin Goyal

Large Language Models (LLMs) that undergo recursive training on synthetically generated data are susceptible to model collapse, a phenomenon marked by the generation of meaningless output. Existing research has examined this issue from…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Konstantinos F. Xylogiannopoulos , Petros Xanthopoulos , Panagiotis Karampelas , Georgios A. Bakamitsos

Within the scaling laws paradigm, which underpins the training of large neural networks like ChatGPT and Llama, we consider a supervised regression setting and establish the existance of a strong form of the model collapse phenomenon, a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Elvis Dohmatob , Yunzhen Feng , Arjun Subramonian , Julia Kempe

Despite impressive capabilities, LLMs' successes often rely on pattern-matching behaviors, yet these are also linked to OOD generalization failures in compositional tasks. However, behavioral studies commonly employ task setups that allow…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Hoyeon Chang , Jinho Park , Hanseul Cho , Sohee Yang , Miyoung Ko , Hyeonbin Hwang , Seungpil Won , Dohaeng Lee , Youbin Ahn , Minjoon Seo

This paper presents a neural network filter method based on contraction operators to address model collapse in recursive training of generative models. Unlike \cite{xu2024probabilistic}, which requires superlinear sample growth…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Zongjian Han , Yiran Liang , Ruiwen Wang , Yiwei Luo , Yilin Huang , Xiaotong Song , Dongqing Wei

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the creation of online content, creating feedback loops as subsequent generations of models will be trained on this synthetic data. Such loops were shown to lead to distribution shifts -…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-29 Grgur Kovač , Jérémy Perez , Rémy Portelas , Peter Ford Dominey , Pierre-Yves Oudeyer

Diversity in training data, architecture, and providers is assumed to mitigate homogeneity in LLMs. However, we lack empirical evidence on whether different LLMs differ meaningfully. We conduct a large-scale empirical evaluation on over 350…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Elliot Kim , Avi Garg , Kenny Peng , Nikhil Garg

Large Language Models (LLM) are already widely used to generate content for a variety of online platforms. As we are not able to safely distinguish LLM-generated content from human-produced content, LLM-generated content is used to train…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Martin Briesch , Dominik Sobania , Franz Rothlauf

With the widespread adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs), the prevalence of iterative interactions among these models is anticipated to increase. Notably, recent advancements in multi-round self-improving methods allow LLMs to generate…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-31 Yi Ren , Shangmin Guo , Linlu Qiu , Bailin Wang , Danica J. Sutherland

Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success in tasks requiring complex reasoning, such as code generation, mathematical problem solving, and algorithmic synthesis -- especially when aided by reasoning tokens and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-13 Jaechul Roh , Varun Gandhi , Shivani Anilkumar , Arin Garg

Training models on uncurated Text Embeddings (TEs) derived from raw tabular data can lead to a severe failure mode known as model collapse, where predictions converge to a single class regardless of input. By comparing models trained with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-24 Lucas Mattioli , Youness Ait Hadichou , Sabrina Chaouche , Martin Gonzalez

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…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Josef Ott

This study seeks to uncover evidence of a latent structure in evolved human culture as it is refracted through contemporary large language models (LLMs). Drawing on parallel responses from six leading generative models to a prompt which…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2026-04-09 W. Russell Neuman

Synthetically-generated data plays an increasingly larger role in training large language models. However, while synthetic data has been found to be useful, studies have also shown that without proper curation it can cause LLM performance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Kareem Amin , Sara Babakniya , Alex Bie , Weiwei Kong , Umar Syed , Sergei Vassilvitskii

Why do language models from different architecture families respond so differently to the same perturbation? We argue that the answer is not scale, but \emph{how architecture shapes information compression}. Analyzing eight Transformer…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-07 Yukin Zhang , Qi Dong , Kemu Xu

Large language models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable progress in natural language generation, yet they continue to display puzzling behaviors -- such as repetition and incoherence -- even when exhibiting low perplexity. This highlights a…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Xin Du , Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii

Stable Diffusion revolutionised image creation from descriptive text. GPT-2, GPT-3(.5) and GPT-4 demonstrated astonishing performance across a variety of language tasks. ChatGPT introduced such language models to the general public. It is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-16 Ilia Shumailov , Zakhar Shumaylov , Yiren Zhao , Yarin Gal , Nicolas Papernot , Ross Anderson

Do large language models reason morally, or do they merely sound like they do? We investigate whether LLM responses to moral dilemmas exhibit genuine developmental progression through Kohlberg's stages of moral development, or whether…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Aryan Kasat , Smriti Singh , Aman Chadha , Vinija Jain

Culture is not just traits but a dynamic system of interdependent beliefs, practices and artefacts embedded in cognitive, social and material structures. Culture evolves as these entities interact, generating path dependence, attractor…

Physics and Society · Physics 2026-01-05 Fredrik Jansson