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Transformer-squared: Self-adaptive LLMs (arxiv.org)
2 points by swyx on Jan 15, 2025 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Instead of retraining the whole network, this system reads each prompt to spot the task, then blends a few small trained weight adjustments to fit it on the fly. It beat the common lightweight fine-tuning method using fewer extra parameters.

Abstract · Transformer-Squared: Self-adaptive LLMs

Self-adaptive large language models (LLMs) aim to solve the challenges posed by traditional fine-tuning methods, which are often computationally intensive and static in their ability to handle diverse tasks. We introduce Transformer-Squared, a novel self-adaptation framework that adapts LLMs for unseen tasks in real-time by selectively adjusting only the singular components of their weight matrices. During inference, Transformer-Squared employs a two-pass mechanism: first, a dispatch system identifies the task properties, and then task-specific 'expert' vectors, trained using reinforcement learning, are dynamically mixed to obtain targeted behavior for the incoming prompt. Our method consistently outperforms ubiquitous approaches such as LoRA, with fewer parameters and greater efficiency. Furthermore, Transformer-Squared demonstrates versatility across different LLM architectures and modalities, including vision-language tasks. Transformer-Squared represents a significant leap forward, offering a scalable, efficient solution for enhancing the adaptability and task-specific performance of LLMs, paving the way for truly dynamic, self-organizing AI systems.

Qi Sun, Edoardo Cetin, Yujin Tang
arXiv:2501.06252 · cs.LG, cs.AI, cs.CL · submitted Jan 9, 2025 · updated Jan 24, 2025
abstract · pdf · html · To appear at the 13th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2025)

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