MLn Club (ML Reading Group) #7: In-context Learning and Induction Heads
Welcome to MLn Week 7: In-context Learning and Induction Heads
What's this?
A super warm group of folks discussing their favorite topics!
In the first half, we host an optional quiet reading space
In the second half, we have a discussion where people can talk about what they found interesting about the reading and ask questions about things they didn't understand
When/Where:
CMU AI Safety Initiative's Office, 201 Craig Street, right across the PNC bank. Look for the open door up the stairs.
8pm discussion, 7pm optional quiet reading time.
Here's how it usually goes:
7:00 PM — arrival and settling in
8:00 PM — introductions
8:10 PM — discussion time
9:00 PM — wrap up then open discussion
Who's it for?
People who've been wanting to read up on the latest papers in ML and other fields but just haven't been able to find the time/motivation.
Why:
We've been procrastinating too much on our readings, even though we have so much fun doing them. We know we're not alone in this and want to keep others accountable for learning more about what they're passionate about!
We've also met a ton of really fun friends by discussing what we care about!
Rules/guidelines on how to act:
Act like a host, include people in conversations, talk to people even if they're strangers, offer to explain what you know, and keep an open mind! come to read stuff and find super fun friends :)
Bring snacks if you're feeling kind!
When does a model suddenly learn to learn — and can you spot the moment on the loss curve?
If a circuit is defined to do nothing but copy random text, why does the same circuit also translate French?
In-context Learning and Induction Heads Olsson, Elhage, Nanda, et al. (Anthropic)
This blog post suggests that induction heads might constitute the mechanism for the actual majority of all in-context learning in large transformer models.
The majority of in-context learning ability (as measured by difference in loss between tokens early and late in the sequence) is acquired, and simultaneously induction heads form within the model that are capable of implementing fairly abstract and fuzzy versions of pattern completion.
Join us at CASI for discussion at 8 pm, and (optional) quiet reading from 7 pm.
Reading Recommendations, Questions, or Comments? Contact us here! View past meeting notes here.