Stanford CS25: Transformers United V6 I Distinct Modes of Generalization from Parameters and Context
For more information about Stanford’s graduate programs, visit: https://online.stanford.edu/graduate-education
May 7, 2026
This seminar covers:
• Two methods for teaching information to language models: training (updating parameters) or in-context learning (providing information in prompts)
• Striking differences in the types of generalization that models make when they learn information via these two routes
• Three different strategies that can help bridge the gap, based on data augmentation, retrieval, and RL
Follow along with the seminar schedule. Visit: https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs25/
Guest Speaker: Andrew Lampinen (Anthropic)
Instructors:
• Steven Feng, Stanford Computer Science PhD student and NSERC PGS-D scholar
• Karan P. Singh, Electrical Engineering PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Stanford Translational AI Lab
• Michael C. Frank, Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor of Human Biology Director, Symbolic Systems Program
• Christopher Manning, Thomas M. Siebel Professor in Machine Learning, Professor of Linguistics and of Computer Science, Co-Founder and Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)
Stanford Online
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