arXiv AI By Joshua S. Schiffman

Transformers converge to invariant algorithmic cores

Read the original on arXiv AI →

arXiv:2602. 22600v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Training selects for behavior, not circuitry: many weight configurations can implement the same function.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv AI.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 17

Understanding the Staged Dynamics of Transformers in Learning Latent Structure

The paper investigates how transformer models learn latent structure by training a small decoder-only transformer on three variants of the Alchemy benchmark. It finds that the model acquires different components of latent structure in discrete stages, with a notable asymmetry: it robustly composes fundamental transitions but struggles to decompose complex examples into atomic transitions. Layer‑specific causal interventions reveal plasticity windows where freezing layers delays or prevents stage completion, offering a detailed view of capability evolution during training.

By Rohan Saha, Farzane Aminmansour, Alona Fyshe
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

TextNCA: Neural Cellular Automata for Language Modeling via Hierarchical Local Attention

arXiv:2608. 02050v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Can a strictly local, iterated, weight-shared computation primitive support language modelling, and which of those three properties actually drives the model's behaviour?

By Avni Mittal, Avinash Anand, Ashutosh Kumar, Dikshant Kukreja, Kritarth Prasad, Sushane Dulloo, Erik Cambria, Timothy Liu, Zhengkui Wang, Rajiv Ratn Shah
arXiv AI
Jun 29

The Context-Ready Transformer

arXiv:2606. 27538v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We introduce the context-ready transformer, a new recurrent neural network architecture built from a D-layer transformer block that pre-contextualizes each token before it enters the block.

By Mahesh Godavarti
arXiv AI
Sep 1

Mechanism Shift During Post-training from Autoregressive to Masked Diffusion Language Models

The study investigates how post‑training of large autoregressive language models (ARMs) into masked diffusion models (MDMs) affects their internal computation. Across two 7B ARM‑MDM families and four diagnostic tasks, the authors find that MDMs retain much of the ARM’s high‑attribution pathways on prefix‑dominant tasks, but reorganize computation toward earlier layers on globally constrained tasks. Component‑level probes reveal that ARMs depend on sharply specialized components, whereas MDMs show weaker specialization and more diffuse output‑space alignment.

By Injin Kong, Hyoungjoon Lee, Yohan Jo