arXiv AI By Jo\~ao Pedro Silvestre, \'Alvaro Rodr\'iguez Abella, Paulo Tabuada

The Attention Within: Consensus Dynamics in Selective State Space Models

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Selective state space models (SSMs) use a recurrence to mix token information, a process analogous to attention in transformers. By modeling token evolution as an ordinary differential equation and applying input‑to‑state stability, the study proves that SSMs exhibit local exponential stability of consensus equilibria and delineates their domain of attraction for time‑varying weight matrices. Experiments on a pretrained Mamba‑2 model reveal that the output gate controls the degree of consensus, preventing tokens from fully converging.

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