AGENTIC-SYSTEMSApril 3, 20261 min read21 views

QUEST: A robust attention formulation using query-modulated spherical attention

Researchers introduce QUEST, a new attention formulation that addresses training instabilities in Transformer models by constraining keys to a hyperspherical space, leading to improved performance and robustness.

Computer Science > Machine Learning

Title:QUEST: A robust attention formulation using query-modulated spherical attention

View PDF HTML (experimental)Abstract:The Transformer model architecture has become one of the most widely used in deep learning and the attention mechanism is at its core. The standard attention formulation uses a softmax operation applied to a scaled dot product between query and key vectors. We explore the role played by norms of the queries and keys, which can cause training instabilities when they arbitrarily increase. We demonstrate how this can happen even in simple Transformer models, in the presence of easy-to-learn spurious patterns in the data. We propose a new attention formulation, QUEry-modulated Spherical aTtention (QUEST), that constrains the keys to a hyperspherical latent space, while still allowing individual tokens to flexibly control the sharpness of the attention distribution. QUEST can be easily used as a drop-in replacement for standard attention. We focus on vision applications while also exploring other domains to highlight the method's generality. We show that (1) QUEST trains without instabilities and (2) produces models with improved performance (3) that are robust to data corruptions and adversarial attacks.

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

Demos

Recommenders and Search Tools

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

Source: arXiv cs.AI Recent

More in this category

agentic-systems

Probabilistic Concept-Aware Steering for Trustworthy LLM Inference

Researchers have introduced Probabilistic Concept-Aware Steering (PCS), an inference-time intervention framework for LLMs. PCS provides fine-grained, safety-oriented semantic steering while preserving original task competence.

agentic-systems

S2T-RLHF: Hierarchical Credit Assignment for Stable Preference-Based RLHF

Researchers introduced S2T-RLHF, a hierarchical credit assignment framework that stabilizes preference-based RLHF training by decomposing response-level rewards into sentence and token levels.

agentic-systems

ProbSPARQL: Querying Knowledge Graphs with Multi-dimensional, Uncertain Numeric Data

Researchers have introduced ProbSPARQL, an upward-compatible SPARQL extension designed to query multi-dimensional and uncertain numeric measurement data within Knowledge Graphs, providing significant query performance gains for complex industrial applications.

agentic-systems

MUX: Continuous Reasoning via Multiplexed Tokens

Researchers introduced MUX, a novel latent reasoning method that compresses discrete text-based reasoning steps into continuous multiplexed tokens. By enabling lossless superposition, MUX significantly boosts LLM reasoning efficiency and speed across complex problem-solving tasks.

agentic-systems

FindStatBench: Evaluating Large Language Models on Combinatorial Code Synthesis

Researchers have introduced FindStatBench, a new execution benchmark containing 2,329 tasks designed to evaluate the combinatorial code synthesis capabilities of large language models.

NOW LET US Related – Cross-Dialect Generalization Without Retraining: Benchmarks and Evaluation of Schema-Derived Constrained Decoding for MLIR

agentic-systems

Cross-Dialect Generalization Without Retraining: Benchmarks and Evaluation of Schema-Derived Constrained Decoding for MLIR

Researchers introduced schema-derived constrained decoding for MLIR, enabling a 1.7B small language model to match or beat 15B-34B LLMs without retraining, while generating code 8x-25x faster.