Knowledge Mechanisms in Large Language Models: A Survey and Perspective
Mengru Wang, Yunzhi Yao, Ziwen Xu, Shuofei Qiao, Shumin Deng, Peng Wang, Xiang Chen, Jia-Chen Gu
Abstract
Understanding knowledge mechanisms in Large Language Models (LLMs) is crucial for advancing towards trustworthy AGI. This paper reviews knowledge mechanism analysis from a novel taxonomy including knowledge utilization and evolution. Knowledge utilization delves into the mechanism of memorization, comprehension and application, and creation. Knowledge evolution focuses on the dynamic progression of knowledge within individual and group LLMs. Moreover, we discuss what knowledge LLMs have learned, the reasons for the fragility of parametric knowledge, and the potential dark knowledge (hypothesis) that will be challenging to address. We hope this work can help understand knowledge in LLMs and provide insights for future research.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{wang-etal-2024-knowledge-mechanisms,
title = "Knowledge Mechanisms in Large Language Models: A Survey and Perspective",
author = "Wang, Mengru and
Yao, Yunzhi and
Xu, Ziwen and
Qiao, Shuofei and
Deng, Shumin and
Wang, Peng and
Chen, Xiang and
Gu, Jia-Chen and
Jiang, Yong and
Xie, Pengjun and
Huang, Fei and
Chen, Huajun and
Zhang, Ningyu",
editor = "Al-Onaizan, Yaser and
Bansal, Mohit and
Chen, Yun-Nung",
booktitle = "Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024",
month = nov,
year = "2024",
address = "Miami, Florida, USA",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-emnlp.416/",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2024.findings-emnlp.416",
pages = "7097--7135"
}