In-context learning

Emergent ability of
Attention Mechanism since of
Induction head

In modern language models, tokens later in the context are easier to predict than tokens earlier in the context. As the context gets longer, loss goes down. In some sense this is just what a sequence model is designed to do (use earlier elements in the sequence to predict later ones), but as the ability to predict later tokens from earlier ones gets better, it can increasingly be used in interesting ways (such as specifying tasks, giving instructions, or asking the model to match a pattern) that suggest it can usefully be thought of as a phenomenon of its own. When thought of in this way, it is usually referred to as in-context learning.

Emergent in-context learning was noted in GPT-2 and gained significant attention in GPT-3. Simply by adjusting a “prompt”, transformers can be adapted to do many useful things without re-training, such as translation, question-answering, arithmetic, and many other tasks. Using “prompt engineering” to leverage in-context learning became a popular topic of study and discussion. -

Anthropic AI

In-context learning Notion

In-context learning ability

In-context Retrieval

ICL Transient nature

ICL Tool

Many-Shot In-Context Learning

In-context scheming