{"paper":{"title":"Gradient Dynamics of Attention: How Cross-Entropy Sculpts Bayesian Manifolds","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI","cs.LG"],"primary_cat":"stat.ML","authors_text":"Naman Agarwal, Siddhartha R. Dalal, Vishal Misra","submitted_at":"2025-12-27T05:31:44Z","abstract_excerpt":"Transformers empirically perform precise probabilistic reasoning in carefully constructed ``Bayesian wind tunnels'' and in large-scale language models, yet the mechanisms by which gradient-based learning creates the required internal geometry remain opaque. We provide a complete first-order analysis of how cross-entropy training reshapes attention scores and value vectors in a transformer attention head. Our core result is an \\emph{advantage-based routing law} for attention scores, \\[ \\frac{\\partial L}{\\partial s_{ij}} = \\alpha_{ij}\\bigl(b_{ij}-\\mathbb{E}_{\\alpha_i}[b]\\bigr), \\qquad b_{ij} := "},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2512.22473","kind":"arxiv","version":5},"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/2512.22473/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"}