Positional Information Matters for Invariant In-Context Learning: A Case
  Study of Simple Function Classes
Yongqiang Chen Binghui Xie Kaiwen Zhou Bo Han Yatao Bian James Cheng
In-context learning (ICL) refers to the ability of a model to condition on a
few in-context demonstrations (input-output examples of the underlying task) to
generate the answer for a new query input, without updating parameters. Despite
the impressive ICL ability of LLMs, it has also been found that ICL in LLMs is
sensitive to input demonstrations and limited to short context lengths. To
understand the limitations and principles for successful ICL, we conduct an
investigation with ICL linear regression of transformers. We characterize
several Out-of-Distribution (OOD) cases for ICL inspired by realistic LLM ICL
failures and compare transformers with DeepSet, a simple yet powerful
architecture for ICL. Surprisingly, DeepSet outperforms transformers across a
variety of distribution shifts, implying that preserving permutation invariance
symmetry to input demonstrations is crucial for OOD ICL. The phenomenon
specifies a fundamental requirement by ICL, which we termed as ICL invariance.
Nevertheless, the positional encodings in LLMs will break ICL invariance. To
this end, we further evaluate transformers with identical positional encodings
and find preserving ICL invariance in transformers achieves state-of-the-art
performance across various ICL distribution shifts