ETC improves Transformer models for long and structured inputs.
problem Scaling input length and encoding structured inputs in Transformers.
method Introduces global-local attention, relative position encodings, and CPC pre-training.
result Achieves state-of-the-art results on four natural language datasets.
LORL learns object-centric representations from vision and language.
problem Learning disentangled, object-centric scene representations from vision and language.
method LORL integrates unsupervised object discovery and segmentation with language input to learn object-centric concepts.
result LORL improves unsupervised object discovery methods and aids downstream tasks.
Study identifies key parameters and input dimensions making LLMs and VLMs brittle.
problem Vulnerability of large language and vision-language models to perturbations.
method Proposed FI measure based on information geometry to quantify sensitivity.
result Small subset of high FI parameters significantly contribute to brittleness.
We describe a simple neural language model that relies only on character-level inputs. Predictions are still made at the word-level. Our model employs a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a highway network over characters, whose output is given to a long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network language mo…
ViLT is a faster vision-and-language model without convolution or region supervision.
problem Efficiency and expressive power limitations in current VLP models.
method A convolution-free Vision-and-Language Transformer (ViLT) that processes visual inputs similarly to textual inputs.
result ViLT is up to tens of times faster with competitive or better performance.
The goal of program synthesis is to automatically generate programs in a particular language from corresponding specifications, e.g. input-output behavior. Many current approaches achieve impressive results after training on randomly generated I/O examples in limited domain-specific languages (DSLs), as with string tra…
ContextBench benchmarks methods for generating linguistically fluent inputs that activate specific latent features in language models.
problem Identifying inputs that trigger specific behaviours or latent features in language models.
method Context modification and benchmarking methods like Evolutionary Prompt Optimisation (EPO) with LLM-assistance and diffusion model inpainting.
result Enhanced methods achieve state-of-the-art performance in balancing elicitation effectiveness and fluency.
Large language models can't efficiently reason conditionally in a distribution-free setting.
problem Impossibility of conditional PAC-efficient reasoning in large language models.
method Proof of impossibility in a distribution-free setting for non-atomic input spaces.
result Any algorithm achieving conditional PAC efficiency must defer to the expert model with high probability.
ExpBERT uses natural language explanations to improve text interpretation.
problem Improving text interpretation for relation extraction tasks.
method Fine-tuning BERT on MultiNLI to interpret natural language explanations.
result ExpBERT matches a BERT baseline but requires less labeled data and improves performance.
SmoothLLM defends LLMs from jailbreaking attacks by randomly perturbing inputs.
problem Adversaries can fool large language models into generating objectionable content.
method SmoothLLM randomly perturbs multiple copies of a prompt and aggregates predictions to detect adversarial inputs.
result SmoothLLM sets the state-of-the-art for robustness against various jailbreak attacks.
New approach decouples skill learning and language grounding for autonomous agents.
problem Autonomous acquisition of skills without external instructions and feedback.
method Language-Goal-Behavior (LGB) architecture with semantic representation.
result Decouples skill learning and language grounding, enabling diversity and strategy switching.
Speech processing systems rely on robust feature extraction to handle phonetic and semantic variations found in natural language. While techniques exist for desensitizing features to common noise patterns produced by Speech-to-Text (STT) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems, the question remains how to best leverage state-…
Differentiable language model attacks improve adversarial examples for categorical sequence classifiers.
problem Challenges in adversarial attacks for categorical sequence models due to non-differentiability.
method Fine-tuning a language model as a generator of adversarial examples, using a differentiable loss function that combines a surrogate classifier score and approximate edit distance.
result Semantically better and more resistant adversarial examples.
Recent breakthroughs in computer vision and natural language processing have spurred interest in challenging multi-modal tasks such as visual question-answering and visual dialogue. For such tasks, one successful approach is to condition image-based convolutional network computation on language via Feature-wise Linear …
Expands MLM by masking token positions, improving performance and convergence.
problem Improving language model performance and convergence.
method Masking token positions along with [MASK] tokens, using a fully connected classifier stage.
result Shows .3% improvement and 50% faster convergence for BERT Base with position masking.
I-BERT extends Transformer's self-attention to arbitrary input lengths.
problem Transformer models struggle with inductive generalization to unseen input lengths.
method Replaces positional encodings with a recurrent layer.
result I-BERT achieves state-of-the-art results on algorithmic tasks.
We study unsupervised multilingual alignment, the problem of finding word-to-word translations between multiple languages without using any parallel data. One popular strategy is to reduce multilingual alignment to the much simplified bilingual setting, by picking one of the input languages as the pivot language that w…
Recurrent neural networks have been very successful at predicting sequences of words in tasks such as language modeling. However, all such models are based on the conventional classification framework, where the model is trained against one-hot targets, and each word is represented both as an input and as an output in …
Recurrent neural networks trained on regular languages exhibit stable states that can recover from noise.
problem Stability of internal states in recurrent neural networks trained on regular languages.
method Empirical study with analysis of network activation and transitions between states.
result Recurrent neural networks trained on regular languages can recover from random perturbations and maintain stable states.
Speech Translation has always been about giving source text or audio input and waiting for system to give translated output in desired form. In this paper, we present the Acoustic Dialect Decoder (ADD) - a voice to voice ear-piece translation device. We introduce and survey the recent advances made in the field of Spee…
Vanishing gradients hinder reinforcement finetuning of language models.
problem Vanishing gradients impede the optimization of language models using reinforcement finetuning.
method The study identifies vanishing gradients as a fundamental optimization obstacle in reinforcement finetuning and proposes an initial supervised finetuning phase to mitigate this issue.
result An initial supervised finetuning phase is crucial for successful reinforcement finetuning of language models, as it helps prevent vanishing gradients and maximizes rewards.
Paper tackles counterfactual sentence detection and evaluation.
problem Detect and evaluate counterfactual sentences in natural language.
method Used a BERT base model for classification and a hybrid BERT Multi-Layer Perceptron for sequence identification. Introduced cascaded linear inputs to improve performance.
result Achieved an F1 score of 85.00% in Task 1 and 83.90% in Task 2.
Bayesian approach quantifies uncertainty in LLM evaluations.
problem Statistical uncertainty in evaluating LLM behavior.
method Bayesian evaluation of LLM behavior using probabilistic text generation strategies.
result Bayesian approach provides useful uncertainty quantification about LLM behavior.
Study improves estimation of rare language model outputs.
problem Estimating probabilities of rare outputs in language models.
method Importance sampling vs. activation extrapolation for low probability estimation.
result Importance sampling outperforms activation extrapolation.
This paper presents a Semantic Attribute Modulation (SAM) for language modeling and style variation. The semantic attribute modulation includes various document attributes, such as titles, authors, and document categories. We consider two types of attributes, (title attributes and category attributes), and a flexible a…
The task of multi-step ahead prediction in language models is challenging considering the discrepancy between training and testing. At test time, a language model is required to make predictions given past predictions as input, instead of the past targets that are provided during training. This difference, known as exp…
This work introduces RISE to explain LLMs more reliably by distinguishing essential context.
problem Identifying which context elements influence LLM outputs reliably.
method RISE (Redundancy-Insensitive Scoring of Explanation) method.
result RISE provides more robust explanations than traditional methods.
Bayesian EnKF improves sentence comprehension uncertainty modeling.
problem Uncertainty in human language comprehension, especially with ambiguous inputs.
method Bayesian framework using ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) for uncertainty quantification.
result Enhanced model's ability to approximate human cognitive processing with linguistic ambiguities.
We propose several ways of reusing subword embeddings and other weights in subword-aware neural language models. The proposed techniques do not benefit a competitive character-aware model, but some of them improve the performance of syllable- and morpheme-aware models while showing significant reductions in model sizes…
Method reveals hidden token embeddings of large language models.
problem Understanding hidden token embeddings in large language models.
method Structured prompts to expose token input embeddings up to homeomorphism.
result Mathematical proof for generic LLMs shows effectiveness of method.
Reward learning enables the application of reinforcement learning (RL) to tasks where reward is defined by human judgment, building a model of reward by asking humans questions. Most work on reward learning has used simulated environments, but complex information about values is often expressed in natural language, and…
AudioPaLM combines text and speech models to improve speech processing and translation.
problem Improving speech understanding and generation models.
method Unified multimodal architecture combining text and speech models.
result AudioPaLM significantly outperforms existing speech translation systems.
We propose a simple modification to existing neural machine translation (NMT) models that enables using a single universal model to translate between multiple languages while allowing for language specific parameterization, and that can also be used for domain adaptation. Our approach requires no changes to the model a…
This paper enhances language models with knowledge awareness.
problem Understanding how much knowledge pretrained language models grasp.
method Inserting explicit knowledge layers into pretraining without changing transformer architecture.
result Significantly more knowledge packed into transformer parameters.
Combining watermark and non-watermark detectors improves LLM detection.
problem Challenges in detecting watermarked language models due to limited entropy.
method Investigates hybrid schemes combining watermark and non-watermark detectors.
result Hybrid schemes outperform either class of detector under various conditions.
Transformers' self-attention mechanism is mapped to a generalized Potts model.
problem Uncertainty in what type of data distribution self-attention can efficiently learn.
method Decouple word positions and embeddings, then show self-attention learns a generalized Potts model.
result Training self-attention is equivalent to solving the inverse Potts problem.
This study analyzes how RNNs process context in sentiment analysis.
problem Understanding how recurrent neural networks process context in sentiment analysis.
method Developed methods to reverse engineer RNNs, identifying contextual effects and quantifying their strength and timescale.
result Identified inputs that induce contextual effects and quantified their properties.
Self-taught optimizer improves code generation using language models.
problem Improving code generation using language models.
method Recursive self-improvement of a scaffolding program that generates code.
result Improved scaffolding program generates programs with significantly better performance.
Natural Language Processing models help encode categorical process inputs.
problem Encoding categorical variables in industrial process modeling.
method Using NLP models for categorical variable encoding, combined with dimensionality reduction.
result Meaningful embeddings of categorical variables improve feature importance.
To save manual effort, developers often translate programs from one programming language to another, instead of implementing it from scratch. Translating application program interfaces (APIs) used in one language to functionally equivalent ones available in another language is an important aspect of program translation…
Token-adaptive FFN design improves LLM expressivity.
problem Fixed activation functions limit FFN expressivity in LLMs.
method Mixture of Activations (MoA) and learnable activations (LA).
result MoA achieves lower terminal loss and better scaling than baselines.
DBPA assesses LLM perturbations using frequentist hypothesis testing.
problem Quantifying input perturbation impacts on LLM outputs.
method DBPA reformulates perturbation analysis as frequentist hypothesis testing, using Monte Carlo sampling for empirical null and alternative distributions.
result DBPA provides interpretable p-values and scalar effect sizes for LLM perturbations.
Attention is an increasingly popular mechanism used in a wide range of neural architectures. The mechanism itself has been realized in a variety of formats. However, because of the fast-paced advances in this domain, a systematic overview of attention is still missing. In this article, we define a unified model for att…
SCROLLS benchmarks long text NLP tasks, improving existing models.
problem Short NLP benchmarks ignore long texts; SCROLLS addresses this.
method Handpicked long-text datasets for summarization, QA, and inference tasks.
result Improvement potential on SCROLLS tasks, as indicated by initial baselines.
We present a memory augmented neural network for natural language understanding: Neural Semantic Encoders. NSE is equipped with a novel memory update rule and has a variable sized encoding memory that evolves over time and maintains the understanding of input sequences through read}, compose and write operations. NSE c…
We describe an online handwriting system that is able to support 102 languages using a deep neural network architecture. This new system has completely replaced our previous Segment-and-Decode-based system and reduced the error rate by 20%-40% relative for most languages. Further, we report new state-of-the-art results…
Following great success in the image processing field, the idea of adversarial training has been applied to tasks in the natural language processing (NLP) field. One promising approach directly applies adversarial training developed in the image processing field to the input word embedding space instead of the discrete…
RESTA defends LLMs against jailbreaking attacks by adding random noise to embeddings.
problem Vulnerability of LLMs to jailbreaking attacks that generate harmful outputs.
method Adds random noise to embedding vectors and aggregates during token generation.
result RESTA achieves superior robustness versus utility tradeoffs compared to baseline defenses.