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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Samuel, David
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04823
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author Samuel, David
author_facet Samuel, David
contents While in-context learning is commonly associated with causal language models, such as GPT, we demonstrate that this capability also 'emerges' in masked language models. Through an embarrassingly simple inference technique, we enable an existing masked model, DeBERTa, to perform generative tasks without additional training or architectural changes. Our evaluation reveals that the masked and causal language models behave very differently, as they clearly outperform each other on different categories of tasks. These complementary strengths suggest that the field's focus on causal models for in-context learning may be limiting - both architectures can develop these capabilities, but with distinct advantages; pointing toward promising hybrid approaches that combine the strengths of both objectives.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_04823
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BERTs are Generative In-Context Learners
Samuel, David
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
While in-context learning is commonly associated with causal language models, such as GPT, we demonstrate that this capability also 'emerges' in masked language models. Through an embarrassingly simple inference technique, we enable an existing masked model, DeBERTa, to perform generative tasks without additional training or architectural changes. Our evaluation reveals that the masked and causal language models behave very differently, as they clearly outperform each other on different categories of tasks. These complementary strengths suggest that the field's focus on causal models for in-context learning may be limiting - both architectures can develop these capabilities, but with distinct advantages; pointing toward promising hybrid approaches that combine the strengths of both objectives.
title BERTs are Generative In-Context Learners
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04823