# Learning Where to Edit Vision Transformers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.01948 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01948/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 51 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06083/) (2017)
- [Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning for Fast Adaptation of Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03400/) (2017)
- [Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.08415/) (2016)
- [CutMix: Regularization Strategy to Train Strong Classifiers with Localizable Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04899/) (2019)
- [Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05262/) (2022)
- [Estimating or Propagating Gradients Through Stochastic Neurons for Conditional Computation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1308.3432/) (2013)
- [The Many Faces of Robustness: A Critical Analysis of Out-of-Distribution Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16241/) (2020)
- [Do ImageNet Classifiers Generalize to ImageNet?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.10811/) (2019)
- [Transformer Feed-Forward Layers Are Key-Value Memories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.14913/) (2020)
- [Learning Robust Global Representations by Penalizing Local Predictive Power](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13549/) (2019)
- [Mass-Editing Memory in a Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07229/) (2022)
- [End-to-end Optimized Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01704/) (2016)
- [Knowledge Neurons in Pretrained Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08696/) (2021)
- [How to train your ViT? Data, Augmentation, and Regularization in Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10270/) (2021)
- [Editing Factual Knowledge in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08164/) (2021)
- [Transformer Feed-Forward Layers Build Predictions by Promoting Concepts in the Vocabulary Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14680/) (2022)
- [Meta-Learning with Implicit Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04630/) (2019)
- [Fast Model Editing at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.11309/) (2021)
- [Memory-Based Model Editing at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06520/) (2022)
- [Editing Large Language Models: Problems, Methods, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13172/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Hiding Images in Diffusion Models by Editing Learned Score Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18459/) (2025)
- [Exploring and Leveraging Class Vectors for Classifier Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11268/) (2025)
- [Let's Split Up: Zero-Shot Classifier Edits for Fine-Grained Video Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16545/) (2026)
- [X-Edit: Exact, Explicit, and Explainable Null-Space Editing for Medical Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24932/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Model editing aims to data-efficiently correct predictive errors of large pre-trained models while ensuring generalization to neighboring failures and locality to minimize unintended effects on unrelated examples. While significant progress has been made in editing Transformer-based large language models, effective strategies for editing vision Transformers (ViTs) in computer vision remain largely untapped. In this paper, we take initial steps towards correcting predictive errors of ViTs, particularly those arising from subpopulation shifts. Taking a locate-then-edit approach, we first address the where-to-edit challenge by meta-learning a hypernetwork on CutMix-augmented data generated for editing reliability. This trained hypernetwork produces generalizable binary masks that identify a sparse subset of structured model parameters, responsive to real-world failure samples. Afterward, we solve the how-to-edit problem by simply fine-tuning the identified parameters using a variant of gradient descent to achieve successful edits. To validate our method, we construct an editing benchmark that introduces subpopulation shifts towards natural underrepresented images and AI-generated images, thereby revealing the limitations of pre-trained ViTs for object recognition. Our approach not only achieves superior performance on the proposed benchmark but also allows for adjustable trade-offs between generalization and locality. Our code is available at https://github.com/hustyyq/Where-to-Edit.