@inproceedings{tang-etal-2024-language,
title = "Language-Specific Neurons: The Key to Multilingual Capabilities in Large Language Models",
author = "Tang, Tianyi and
Luo, Wenyang and
Huang, Haoyang and
Zhang, Dongdong and
Wang, Xiaolei and
Zhao, Xin and
Wei, Furu and
Wen, Ji-Rong",
editor = "Ku, Lun-Wei and
Martins, Andre and
Srikumar, Vivek",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = aug,
year = "2024",
address = "Bangkok, Thailand",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.309",
pages = "5701--5715",
abstract = "Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate remarkable multilingual capabilities without being pre-trained on specially curated multilingual parallel corpora.It remains a challenging problem to explain the underlying mechanisms by which LLMs process multilingual texts.In this paper, we delve into the composition of Transformer architectures in LLMs to pinpoint language-specific regions.Specially, we propose a novel detection method, language activation probability entropy (LAPE), to identify language-specific neurons within LLMs.Based on LAPE, we conduct comprehensive experiments on several representative LLMs, such as LLaMA-2, BLOOM, and Mistral. Our findings indicate that LLMs{'} proficiency in processing a particular language is predominantly due to a small subset of neurons, primarily situated in the models{'} top and bottom layers.Furthermore, we showcase the feasibility to {``}steer{''} the output language of LLMs by selectively activating or deactivating language-specific neurons. Our research provides important evidence to the understanding and exploration of the multilingual capabilities of LLMs.",
}
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<abstract>Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate remarkable multilingual capabilities without being pre-trained on specially curated multilingual parallel corpora.It remains a challenging problem to explain the underlying mechanisms by which LLMs process multilingual texts.In this paper, we delve into the composition of Transformer architectures in LLMs to pinpoint language-specific regions.Specially, we propose a novel detection method, language activation probability entropy (LAPE), to identify language-specific neurons within LLMs.Based on LAPE, we conduct comprehensive experiments on several representative LLMs, such as LLaMA-2, BLOOM, and Mistral. Our findings indicate that LLMs’ proficiency in processing a particular language is predominantly due to a small subset of neurons, primarily situated in the models’ top and bottom layers.Furthermore, we showcase the feasibility to “steer” the output language of LLMs by selectively activating or deactivating language-specific neurons. Our research provides important evidence to the understanding and exploration of the multilingual capabilities of LLMs.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Language-Specific Neurons: The Key to Multilingual Capabilities in Large Language Models
%A Tang, Tianyi
%A Luo, Wenyang
%A Huang, Haoyang
%A Zhang, Dongdong
%A Wang, Xiaolei
%A Zhao, Xin
%A Wei, Furu
%A Wen, Ji-Rong
%Y Ku, Lun-Wei
%Y Martins, Andre
%Y Srikumar, Vivek
%S Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2024
%8 August
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Bangkok, Thailand
%F tang-etal-2024-language
%X Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate remarkable multilingual capabilities without being pre-trained on specially curated multilingual parallel corpora.It remains a challenging problem to explain the underlying mechanisms by which LLMs process multilingual texts.In this paper, we delve into the composition of Transformer architectures in LLMs to pinpoint language-specific regions.Specially, we propose a novel detection method, language activation probability entropy (LAPE), to identify language-specific neurons within LLMs.Based on LAPE, we conduct comprehensive experiments on several representative LLMs, such as LLaMA-2, BLOOM, and Mistral. Our findings indicate that LLMs’ proficiency in processing a particular language is predominantly due to a small subset of neurons, primarily situated in the models’ top and bottom layers.Furthermore, we showcase the feasibility to “steer” the output language of LLMs by selectively activating or deactivating language-specific neurons. Our research provides important evidence to the understanding and exploration of the multilingual capabilities of LLMs.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.309
%P 5701-5715
Markdown (Informal)
[Language-Specific Neurons: The Key to Multilingual Capabilities in Large Language Models](https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.309) (Tang et al., ACL 2024)
ACL
- Tianyi Tang, Wenyang Luo, Haoyang Huang, Dongdong Zhang, Xiaolei Wang, Xin Zhao, Furu Wei, and Ji-Rong Wen. 2024. Language-Specific Neurons: The Key to Multilingual Capabilities in Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 5701–5715, Bangkok, Thailand. Association for Computational Linguistics.