Mar 2026· arXiv.org· Vol abs/2603.18593· 0 citations· 23 references
Computer Science
TL;DR
A method that represents language models by log-likelihood vectors over prompt-response pairs and constructs model maps for comparing their conditional distributions is proposed, which supports the analysis and prediction of input-dependent model behavior.
Abstract
We propose a method that represents language models by log-likelihood vectors over prompt-response pairs and constructs model maps for comparing their conditional distributions. In this space, squared Euclidean distances between models are approximately proportional to the KL divergence between the corresponding conditional distributions. Experiments on a large collection of publicly available language models show that the maps capture meaningful global structure, including relationships to model attributes and task performance. The representation also captures systematic shifts induced by prompt modifications and their approximate additive compositionality; we use the vectors to predict downstream task scores and leverage their additive structure to approximate the effects of composite prompt operations without directly observing the corresponding log-likelihood vectors. We further introduce PMI vectors to reduce the influence of unconditional distributions; in some cases, PMI-based model maps better reflect training-data-related differences. Overall, the framework supports the analysis and prediction of input-dependent model behavior.
The concavity of the matrix-based conditional entropy functional is proved, which makes the resulting entropy-constrained projection a convex optimization problem, and a scalable mirror-descent algorithm for its implementation is developed.
A declarative probabilistic framework for pre-training evaluation that makes the semantic structure of model behavior explicit and provides new formal tools for relating evaluation to learning, and links evaluation and learning through a shared semantics.
Kyle Richardson, C. Anderson, Pranav Balakrishnan et al.· 1 citation
Non-language data can serve as a partial substitute for language data for the training objective of next-token prediction but does not reliably support broader linguistic generalization, and transfer from non-language data is less efficient than additional language data.
Yana Veitsman, Jonas Mayer Martins, Jonathan Lautenschlager et al.· 1 citation
While representation similarity across independently trained language models is well-documented, how internal mechanics such as attention behave across models remains far less characterized. Inspired by this gap, we examine the structure of post-softmax attention weights by marginalizing over query positions, mapping t...
Valentino Maiorca, Walter Nelson, Francesco Locatello· 0 citations
Symbolic regression combines structural search with numerical fitting, but aggregate fit scores do not describe how the remaining error varies across inputs. We introduce RISR, a residual-informed method that uses these error patterns to guide formula discovery and learn which corrections are worth fitting. A residual...
Hao-Bo Li, Wen-Shuo Zhang, Wen-Xiao Zhao et al.· 0 citations
GoldiMask is introduced, which selects tokens to reveal as context by approximately maximizing a submodular objective and weights the remaining targets according to how they benefit from the selected context and their remaining learning potential.
L. Mualem, L. Pastor-Pérez, Vinh Tong et al.· 0 citations
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