Attention outside NLP
How **attention** ideas show up beyond language: vision transformers, multimodal fusion, and set reasoning—while remembering attention ≠ explanation.
What it is
How attention ideas show up beyond language: vision transformers, multimodal fusion, and set reasoning—while remembering attention ≠ explanation.
Why it matters
Connects Course 07 transformers to Course 05/12 practice without reinventing Q/K/V.
How it works (plain)
Models learn where to focus among patches, tokens, or modalities. Use attention maps cautiously as clues, not proof.
Try it
When you see an attention heatmap demo, ask what task metric improved—not only whether the map “looks right.”
Myths
- ⚠️ Myth: Bright attention blobs prove understanding.
- ✓ Reality: They can be misleading; evaluate behavior.
Sources
- Course 07 self-attention; Course 12 VLMs; ViT papers (cite specifically)