{"paper":{"title":"Transformer-like Inference from Optimal Control","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.SY","eess.SY"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Aditya Kudre, Heng-Sheng Chang, Prashant G. Mehta","submitted_at":"2026-05-15T04:42:19Z","abstract_excerpt":"Decoder-only transformers compute the conditional probability of the next token from a sequence of past observations. This paper derives, from first principles, inference architectures that solve the same prediction problem - and in doing so, recovers transformer-like layer operations as a consequence of optimal control theory. The framework is developed for two model classes: a nonlinear model of discrete-valued processes, directly motivated by the transformer, and a linear Gaussian model as a tractable baseline. For both model classes, the prediction objective is reformulated as an optimal c"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2605.15608","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/2605.15608/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[{"name":"ai_meta_artifact","ran_at":"2026-05-19T19:34:34.622018Z","status":"skipped","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"claim_evidence","ran_at":"2026-05-19T17:41:56.048385Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0}],"snapshot_sha256":"e662fdb441e76edbfebf80e60351ac71de87873835b95937a9543ff5aa8c155a"},"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"}