Kati8/ICLR_2023_2025 huggingface dataset:
authors: Wei Wang
authors: Li Qing
reviews: 
Comments: The authors study the concept of memory in LLMs. They draw inspiration from recent work demonstrating how UAT can be applied to Transformer architectures, propose a new definition of memory that can be applied to both humans and transformer LLMs, and introduce a concept of "Schrodinger's Memory" - a type of memory that can only be detected upon probing. Lastly, the authors run a few experiments, demonstrating remarkable memory capacity of transformer architectures and proving conclusively that transformers are capable of a certain form memory.
Strengths: The paper addresses an important topic. It is crucial that we study in detail the similarities and differences in memory processes between humans and LLMs, as well as devote plenty of effort do understand how memory manifests in transformer architectures.

The paper is relatively clearly written.

The work has both a theoretical and a practical component. It is always commendable when practical experiments are informed by theory.
Weaknesses: ** Novelty **
Unfortunately, the paper is not sufficiently novel to pass the high standards of the ICLR conference. The main empirical result in the paper is a rediscovery of a well-known phenomenon of overfitting. As is well-known, LLMs do indeed possess a remarkable ability for verbatim memorization of items in the training set.

**Quality**
Unfortunately, the quality of the literature review or the theoretical justification of the proposed work is not sufficient to pass the high standards of the ICLR conference. The authors pose a number of rhetorical questions, such as "So, is this sentence stored within a single neuron?" entirely ignoring decades of memory research in Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience. It is also staggering to see them claim 'in summary, the term ”memory” was traditionally used to refer specifically to human memory before the emergence of LLMs'. This entirely ignores the research on memory in animals and even plants, not to mention the related concepts of the memory of materials, cultural memory, and a plethora of other related concepts.

I find it commendable that the authors ask ambitious, fundamental questions, such as "moreover, if this memory is stored in a fixed set of neurons, then every time the question is raised, the response should be identical, since the retrieval would be from the same static content." Unfortunately, however, such questions have been extensively studied not even for centuries, but for millennia. If these questions are truly of interest, I suggest starting with the works of Pavlov, Skinner, and Tolman to gain a historical perspective on how this and related questions have been approached by the scientific community.
Recommendation: 1
Reviewer confidence: 4
Soundness/correctness: 1
Clarity: 2