{"paper":{"title":"Interpreting the Repeated Token Phenomenon in Large Language Models","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI","cs.CL","cs.CR"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Federico Barbero, Ilia Shumailov, Itay Yona, Jamie Hayes, Yossi Gandelsman","submitted_at":"2025-03-11T21:40:58Z","abstract_excerpt":"Large Language Models (LLMs), despite their impressive capabilities, often fail to accurately repeat a single word when prompted to, and instead output unrelated text. This unexplained failure mode represents a vulnerability, allowing even end-users to diverge models away from their intended behavior. We aim to explain the causes for this phenomenon and link it to the concept of ``attention sinks'', an emergent LLM behavior crucial for fluency, in which the initial token receives disproportionately high attention scores. Our investigation identifies the neural circuit responsible for attention"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2503.08908","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2503.08908/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}