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Re:Ask HN: Can someone ELI5 Transformers and the “Attention ... by nil-sec on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @01:51PM (#35978884)
Feedforward: y=Wx

Attention: y=W(x)x

W is Matrix, x & y Are vectors. In the second case, W is a function of the input.

Re:Ask HN: Can someone ELI5 Transformers and the “Attention ... by Sai_ on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @02:07PM (#35979057)
You must be from a planet with very long years!

There is no way I can even begin to digest what you have said in your comment.

Re:Ask HN: Can someone ELI5 Transformers and the “Attention ... by nil-sec on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @02:52PM (#35979587)
Sorry maybe I should have added more explanation. One way to think about attention, which is the main distinguishing element in a transformer, is as an adaptable matrix. A feedforward layer is a matrix with static entries that do not change at inference time (only during training). The attention mechanism offers a way to have adaptable weight matrices at inference time (this is implemented by using three different matrices, K,Q & V called keys query and value in case you want to dig deeper).
Re:Ask HN: Can someone ELI5 Transformers and the “Attention ... by oneearedrabbit on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @02:14PM (#35979163)
I think in your notation it should have been:

y=Wx_0

y=W(x)x_0

Re:Ask HN: Can someone ELI5 Transformers and the “Attention ... by nil-sec on Wednesday May 17, 2023 @02:30PM (#35979353)
I guess I was more thinking about self attention, so yes. The more general case is covered by your notation!