GPT as a Monte Carlo Language Tree: A Probabilistic Perspective

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Ning, Kun-Peng, Yao, Jia-Yu, Liu, Yu-Yang, Ning, Mu-Nan, Yuan, Li
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Ning, Kun-Peng
Yao, Jia-Yu
Liu, Yu-Yang
Ning, Mu-Nan
Yuan, Li
author_facet Ning, Kun-Peng
Yao, Jia-Yu
Liu, Yu-Yang
Ning, Mu-Nan
Yuan, Li
contents Large Language Models (LLMs), such as GPT, are considered to learn the latent distributions within large-scale web-crawl datasets and accomplish natural language processing (NLP) tasks by predicting the next token. However, this mechanism of latent distribution modeling lacks quantitative understanding and analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel perspective that any language dataset can be represented by a Monte Carlo Language Tree (abbreviated as ``Data-Tree''), where each node denotes a token, each edge denotes a token transition probability, and each sequence has a unique path. Any GPT-like language model can also be flattened into another Monte Carlo Language Tree (abbreviated as ``GPT-Tree''). Our experiments show that different GPT models trained on the same dataset exhibit significant structural similarity in GPT-Tree visualization, and larger models converge more closely to the Data-Tree. More than 87\% GPT output tokens can be recalled by Data-Tree. These findings may confirm that the reasoning process of LLMs is more likely to be probabilistic pattern-matching rather than formal reasoning, as each model inference seems to find a context pattern with maximum probability from the Data-Tree. Furthermore, we provide deeper insights into issues such as hallucination, Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning, and token bias in LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_07641
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GPT as a Monte Carlo Language Tree: A Probabilistic Perspective
Ning, Kun-Peng
Yao, Jia-Yu
Liu, Yu-Yang
Ning, Mu-Nan
Yuan, Li
Computation and Language
Large Language Models (LLMs), such as GPT, are considered to learn the latent distributions within large-scale web-crawl datasets and accomplish natural language processing (NLP) tasks by predicting the next token. However, this mechanism of latent distribution modeling lacks quantitative understanding and analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel perspective that any language dataset can be represented by a Monte Carlo Language Tree (abbreviated as ``Data-Tree''), where each node denotes a token, each edge denotes a token transition probability, and each sequence has a unique path. Any GPT-like language model can also be flattened into another Monte Carlo Language Tree (abbreviated as ``GPT-Tree''). Our experiments show that different GPT models trained on the same dataset exhibit significant structural similarity in GPT-Tree visualization, and larger models converge more closely to the Data-Tree. More than 87\% GPT output tokens can be recalled by Data-Tree. These findings may confirm that the reasoning process of LLMs is more likely to be probabilistic pattern-matching rather than formal reasoning, as each model inference seems to find a context pattern with maximum probability from the Data-Tree. Furthermore, we provide deeper insights into issues such as hallucination, Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning, and token bias in LLMs.
title GPT as a Monte Carlo Language Tree: A Probabilistic Perspective
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.07641