Slot Machines: How LLMs Keep Track of Multiple Entities
Language models must bind entities to the attributes they possess and maintain several such binding relationships within a context. We study how multiple entities are represented across token positions and whether single tokens can carry bindings for more than one entity. We introduce a multi-slot probing approach that disentangles a single token's residual stream activation to recover information about both the currently described entity and the immediately preceding one. These two kinds of information are encoded in separate and largely orthogonal "current-entity" and "prior-entity" slots. We analyze the functional roles of these slots and find that they serve different purposes. In tan...
| Authors | Paul C. Bogdan, Jack Lindsey |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 22 April 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 22 April 2026 |
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