Researcher argues "recurrent" Transformers are just deeper feedforward nets with tied parameters

savvyRL · x · 2026-09-03

savvyRL reiterates that no amount of looping makes a Transformer truly recurrent: the added "recurrence" is just depth recurrence with tied parameters, equivalent to making the model deeper; real recurrence requires carrying state forward in time. Cites their papers "The Topological Trouble With Transformers" (arxiv:2604.17121) and "Recirculation" (arxiv:2608.17981).

Related event: Debate over Looped Transformers: Real Recurrence or Just Tied-Parameter Depth(5 posts)→

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