Transformers as Graph-to-Graph Models
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Abstract (arXiv)
We argue that Transformers are essentially graph-to-graph models, with sequences just being a special case. Attention weights are functionally equivalent to graph edges. Our Graph-to-Graph Transformer architecture makes this ability explicit, by inputting graph edges into the attention weight computations and predicting graph edges with attention-like functions, thereby integrating explicit graphs into the latent graphs learned by pretrained Transformers. Adding iterative graph refinement provides a joint embedding of input, output, and latent graphs, allowing non-autoregressive graph prediction to optimise the complete graph without any bespoke pipeline or decoding strategy. Empirical results show that this architecture achieves state-of-the-art accuracies for modelling a variety of linguistic structures, integrating very effectively with the latent linguistic representations learned by pretraining.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 60 of its 96 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Oct 2023.
Builds on
60 of 96 references.
References · 60
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38 more
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50 most cited of 60 All 60 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 2.
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