2025.acl-long.507@ACL

Total: 1

#1 On Support Samples of Next Word Prediction [PDF3] [Copy] [Kimi1] [REL]

Authors: Yuqian Li, Yupei Du, Yufang Liu, Feifei Feng, Mou Xiao Feng, Yuanbin Wu

Language models excel in various tasks by making complex decisions, yet understanding the rationale behind these decisions remains a challenge. This paper investigates data-centric interpretability in language models, focusing on the next-word prediction task. Using representer theorem, we identify two types of support samples—those that either promote or deter specific predictions. Our findings reveal that being a support sample is an intrinsic property, predictable even before training begins. Additionally, while non-support samples are less influential in direct predictions, they play a critical role in preventing overfitting and shaping generalization and representation learning. Notably, the importance of non-support samples increases in deeper layers, suggesting their significant role in intermediate representation formation.These insights shed light on the interplay between data and model decisions, offering a new dimension to understanding language model behavior and interpretability.

Subject: ACL.2025 - Long Papers