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How do transformers differ from traditional neural networks in handling sequence data?
Asked on Nov 27, 2025
Answer
Transformers differ from traditional neural networks in handling sequence data by using self-attention mechanisms, which allow them to process entire sequences simultaneously rather than sequentially, improving efficiency and capturing long-range dependencies.
Example Concept: Transformers use a self-attention mechanism to weigh the importance of different words in a sequence relative to each other, allowing them to process sequences in parallel. This contrasts with traditional recurrent neural networks (RNNs), which process data sequentially, making them less efficient and often less effective at capturing dependencies over long distances.
Additional Comment:
- Transformers eliminate the need for recurrence by processing input data all at once, which speeds up training and inference.
- Self-attention allows transformers to focus on different parts of the input sequence when making predictions, improving context understanding.
- Transformers have become the backbone of many state-of-the-art models in natural language processing due to their scalability and performance.
- Unlike RNNs, transformers can handle variable-length sequences without the need for padding or truncation.
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