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Yasaman Bahri

@yasamanbb.bsky.social
850 followers 252 following 27 posts

Research Scientist @ Google DeepMind. AI + physics. Prev Ph.D. @ UC Berkeley. sites.google.com/view/yasamanbahri/…

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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Exciting - congrats Andrew!
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Figure showing translation symmetry in co-occurrence statistics & PCA of model representations match across theory, word2vec, and LLMs:
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
and thereby mediate correlations and constrain the geometry of representations. The robustness of this representational geometry should therefore be understood as a collective effect (!).
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
We had observed a similar robustness in our earlier work (arxiv.org/abs/2505.18651). In our new paper, this geometric recovery can be explained by extending our prior theory to one with a continuous latent variable. That is, many words in a vocabulary have a notion of e.g. 'time' or 'space' ...
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
This means important geometric information is hidden in co-occurrence between these words and other words in the vocabulary - for example, words with a notion of seasonality - that have some semantic overlap.
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Surprisingly, the geometric information for a collection of words - for example, the 12 calendar months of the year - does not arise solely from co-occurrences within that group. One can ablate their contribution entirely and find that representations of the 12 months can still be recovered.
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Neural representations can be used for decoding via linear probes (such as predicting spatial or temporal coordinates), and our theory, based on constraints from symmetry, predicts the efficiency of this decoding process, matching empirics.
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
That our theory carries over to LLM observations (despite lacking a theoretical handle here) demonstrates how symmetry in simple low-order statistics can have robust effects on representations.
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Word embeddings there have Fourier PCA modes, and the geometry we obtain here is predictive of that found in LLM hidden layers, explaining & unifying prior observations with a single idea.
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Translation symmetry in co-occurrence statistics & PCA of model representations match across theory, word2vec, and LLMs:
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
to a translation symmetry that can be seen empirically in the co-occurrence statistics of natural language (!). That is, the co-occurrence of words in such a collection (which semantically correspond to a collection of points on a lattice) depends only on the distance between them.
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Prior work has found that LLM representations of certain collections of words (such as words corresponding to space, time, and color - among others) exhibit simple, regular structure in their PCA components. We show this arises in simple word embedding models (word2vec) as well, and trace it back...
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
In our new preprint, we explain how some salient features of representational geometry in language modeling originate from a single principle - translation symmetry in the statistics of data. arxiv.org/abs/2602.150... With Dhruva Karkada, Daniel Korchinski, Andres Nava, & Matthieu Wyart.
arxiv.org
Symmetry in language statistics shapes the geometry of model representations
Although learned representations underlie neural networks' success, their fundamental properties remain poorly understood. A striking example is the emergence of simple geometric structures in LLM rep...
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Reposted by Yasaman Bahri
arXiv cs.LG Machine Learning @cslg-bot.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Dhruva Karkada, Daniel J. Korchinski, Andres Nava, Matthieu Wyart, Yasaman Bahri: Symmetry in language statistics shapes the geometry of model representations arxiv.org/abs/2602.15029 arxiv.org/pdf/2602.15029 arxiv.org/html/2602.15029
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Eghbal Hosseini @eghbal-hosseini.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
How do diverse context structures reshape representations in LLMs? In our new work, we explore this via representational straightening. We found LLMs are like a Swiss Army knife: they select different computational mechanisms reflected in different representational structures. 1/
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
Congratulations!
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Reposted by Yasaman Bahri
Andrew Lampinen @lampinen.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Why isn’t modern AI built around principles from cognitive science or neuroscience? Starting a substack (infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/why-isnt-m...) by writing down my thoughts on that question: as part of a first series of posts giving my current thoughts on the relation between these fields. 1/3
infinitefaculty.substack.com
Why isn’t modern AI built around principles from cognitive science?
First post in a series on cognitive science and AI
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
...this work on Fri 12/5.
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Surprisingly, there is great agreement with real language data (you can even see the Kronecker product structure in Wikipedia text!). As we found later, our theoretical model makes concrete some ideas put forth by the cognitive psychologist David Rumelhart. Daniel (lead author) will be presenting...
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
We propose a latent variable model that prescribes a particular (Kronecker product) structure for the co-occurrence probabilities of words. The eigendecomposition is analytically solvable and gives testable predictions for when, how, and why the ability to solve linear analogies emerges.
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
can complete analogies, we felt they did not satisfyingly address some stringent empirical tests. In arxiv.org/abs/2505.18651, with Daniel Korchinski, Dhruva, and Matthieu Wyart, we propose a new theory.
arxiv.org
On the Emergence of Linear Analogies in Word Embeddings
Models such as Word2Vec and GloVe construct word embeddings based on the co-occurrence probability $P(i,j)$ of words $i$ and $j$ in text corpora. The resulting vectors $W_i$ not only group semanticall...
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
The ability to do analogical reasoning with word vectors is perhaps the simplest example of an "emergent" ability, in the sense that nontrivial computational properties arise despite the loss not having been explicitly optimized for this task. While many works have tried to explain why word vectors
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
(with famous examples like "king is to queen as man is to woman"). Dhruva Karkada (lead author) will be presenting this work at NeurIPS on Thu 12/4.
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
of the co-occurrence statistics of words (a measure of two-point correlations). Among other things, this means that the *complete eigendecomposition* (mode by mode) of co-occurrence probabilities of words is important for understanding why word vectors are able to complete simple analogies
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
In arxiv.org/abs/2502.09863, we show that a family of supervised loss functions, quartic in the learnable weights, capture the learning dynamics and semantic structure of word embedding models such as word2vec. This allows closed-form expressions for the full trajectory of learning in terms
arxiv.org
Closed-Form Training Dynamics Reveal Learned Features and Linear Structure in Word2Vec-like Models
Self-supervised word embedding algorithms such as word2vec provide a minimal setting for studying representation learning in language modeling. We examine the quartic Taylor approximation of the word2...
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
I'll be missing NeurIPS this year, but we have two conference papers on the dynamics of learning and the structure of data in language modeling, a new direction I'm excited about: arxiv.org/abs/2502.09863 and arxiv.org/abs/2505.18651.
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Surya Ganguli @suryaganguli.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Very excited to lead this new @simonsfoundation.org collaboration on the physics of learning and neural computation to develop powerful tools from physics, math, CS, stats, neuro and more to elucidate the scientific principles underlying AI. See our website for more: www.physicsoflearning.org
physicsoflearning.org
Home | Physics Of Learning
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
I'll briefly touch on arxiv.org/abs/2502.09863 (with Dhruva, Jamie, and Michael) and then discuss arxiv.org/abs/2505.18651 (with Daniel, Dhruva, and Matthieu).
arxiv.org
On the Emergence of Linear Analogies in Word Embeddings
Models such as Word2Vec and GloVe construct word embeddings based on the co-occurrence probability $P(i,j)$ of words $i$ and $j$ in text corpora. The resulting vectors $W_i$ not only group semanticall...
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
My talk is "On the emergence of linear structure in word embeddings" & will cover joint works with some fantastic collaborators: Dhruva Karkada, Jamie Simon, Michael DeWeese, Daniel Korchinski, & Matthieu Wyart. I'm excited about this line of work & hope you'll find it interesting!
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
I'm looking forward to giving a talk tomorrow morning at the ICML workshop on High-Dimensional Learning Dynamics (HiDL) sites.google.com/view/hidimle.... Come by at 9 am!
sites.google.com
Workshop on High-dimensional Learning Dynamics
18 July, ICML 2025 Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Yasaman Bahri @yasamanbb.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Excited to be at the APS March Meeting this year! @apsphysics.bsky.social I'll be giving a talk in the Tues afternoon session MAR-J58, Physics of Learning & Adaptation I.
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Mariel Pettee @marielpettee.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
A wide range of insightful and inspiring talks today at #ML4PS @neuripsconf.bsky.social , including @yasamanbb.bsky.social , Thea Aarrestad, and @annalenakofler.bsky.social
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