Ep 255: Does this research explain how LLMs work?

Ep 255: Does this research explain how LLMs work?

From ToKCast by Brett Hall

January 14, 2026 · 1h 23m · Episode 256

About this episode

The episode explores research papers related to how LLMs work, focusing on the Bayesian Attention Trilogy and includes an interview with one of the authors.

I take a look at these three papers: 1. https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2512.22471 2. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23752 3. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.22473 Collectively titled "The Bayesian Attention Trilogy" along with some other material - in particular an interview with one of the authors "Vishal Misra" - https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/faculty-staff/directory/vishal-misra For those familiar with my output on this you can probably skip to about halfway through at 42:40. Prior to this is a lot of background on Induction, Bayesianism, Critical Rationalism and so on that people may have heard from me before in different contexts - although for what it's worth these are new ways of expressing those ideas. At the end I am reacting to a video found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRuY0ozEm3Q

People in this episode

Guest: Vishal Misra

Topics covered

  • LLMs
  • Bayesianism
  • Induction
  • Critical Rationalism

Keywords

  • research
  • papers
  • interview
  • video reaction

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Bayesian Attention Trilogy

Books & works: The Bayesian Attention Trilogy

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