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Dead Weights, Live Signals: Feedforward Graphs of Frozen Language Models

Marcus Armstrong, Navid Ayoobi, Arjun Mukherjee · Apr 9, 2026 · Citations: 0

How to use this paper page

Coverage: Recent

Use this page to decide whether the paper is strong enough to influence an eval design. It summarizes the abstract plus available structured metadata. If the signal is thin, use it as background context and compare it against stronger hub pages before making protocol choices.

Best use

Background context only

Metadata: Recent

Trust level

Provisional

Signals: Recent

What still needs checking

Structured extraction is still processing; current fields are metadata-first.

Signal confidence unavailable

Abstract

We present a feedforward graph architecture in which heterogeneous frozen large language models serve as computational nodes, communicating through a shared continuous latent space via learned linear projections. Building on recent work demonstrating geometric compatibility between independently trained LLM latent spaces~\cite{armstrong2026thinking}, we extend this finding from static two-model steering to end-to-end trainable multi-node graphs, where projection matrices are optimized jointly via backpropagation through residual stream injection hooks. Three small frozen models (Llama-3.2-1B, Qwen2.5-1.5B, Gemma-2-2B) encode the input into a shared latent space whose aggregate signal is injected into two larger frozen models (Phi-3-mini, Mistral-7B), whose representations feed a lightweight cross-attention output node. With only 17.6M trainable parameters against approximately 12B frozen, the architecture achieves 87.3\% on ARC-Challenge, 82.8\% on OpenBookQA, and 67.2\% on MMLU, outperforming the best single constituent model by 11.4, 6.2, and 1.2 percentage points respectively, and outperforming parameter-matched learned classifiers on frozen single models by 9.1, 5.2, and 6.7 points. Gradient flow through multiple frozen model boundaries is empirically verified to be tractable, and the output node develops selective routing behavior across layer-2 nodes without explicit supervision.

Use caution before copying this protocol

Use this page for context, then validate protocol choices against stronger HFEPX references before implementation decisions.

  • Structured extraction is still processing; current fields are metadata-first.

HFEPX Relevance Assessment

Signal extraction is still processing. This page currently shows metadata-first guidance until structured protocol fields are ready.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A provisional background reference while structured extraction finishes.

Main weakness

Structured extraction is still processing; current fields are metadata-first.

Trust level

Provisional

Eval-Fit Score

Unavailable

Eval-fit score is unavailable until extraction completes.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Weak / implicit signal

HFEPX Fit

Provisional (processing)

Extraction confidence: Provisional

What This Page Found In The Paper

Each field below shows whether the signal looked explicit, partial, or missing in the available metadata. Use this to judge what is safe to trust directly and what still needs full-paper validation.

Human Feedback Types

provisional

None explicit

Confidence: Provisional Best-effort inference

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

Evidence snippet: We present a feedforward graph architecture in which heterogeneous frozen large language models serve as computational nodes, communicating through a shared continuous latent space via learned linear projections.

Evaluation Modes

provisional

None explicit

Confidence: Provisional Best-effort inference

Validate eval design from full paper text.

Evidence snippet: We present a feedforward graph architecture in which heterogeneous frozen large language models serve as computational nodes, communicating through a shared continuous latent space via learned linear projections.

Quality Controls

provisional

Not reported

Confidence: Provisional Best-effort inference

No explicit QC controls found.

Evidence snippet: We present a feedforward graph architecture in which heterogeneous frozen large language models serve as computational nodes, communicating through a shared continuous latent space via learned linear projections.

Benchmarks / Datasets

provisional

MMLU

Confidence: Provisional Best-effort inference

Useful for quick benchmark comparison.

Evidence snippet: With only 17.6M trainable parameters against approximately 12B frozen, the architecture achieves 87.3\% on ARC-Challenge, 82.8\% on OpenBookQA, and 67.2\% on MMLU, outperforming the best single constituent model by 11.4, 6.2, and 1.2 percentage points respectively, and outperforming parameter-matched learned classifiers on frozen single models by 9.1, 5.2, and 6.7 points.

Reported Metrics

provisional

Not extracted

Confidence: Provisional Best-effort inference

No metric anchors detected.

Evidence snippet: We present a feedforward graph architecture in which heterogeneous frozen large language models serve as computational nodes, communicating through a shared continuous latent space via learned linear projections.

Rater Population

provisional

Unknown

Confidence: Provisional Best-effort inference

Rater source not explicitly reported.

Evidence snippet: We present a feedforward graph architecture in which heterogeneous frozen large language models serve as computational nodes, communicating through a shared continuous latent space via learned linear projections.

Human Data Lens

This page is using abstract-level cues only right now. Treat the signals below as provisional.

  • Potential human-data signal: No explicit human-data keywords detected.
  • Potential benchmark anchors: MMLU
  • Abstract highlights: 3 key sentence(s) extracted below.

Evaluation Lens

Evaluation fields are inferred from the abstract only.

  • Potential evaluation modes: No explicit eval keywords detected.
  • Potential metric signals: No metric keywords detected.
  • Confidence: Provisional (metadata-only fallback).

Research Brief

Metadata summary

We present a feedforward graph architecture in which heterogeneous frozen large language models serve as computational nodes, communicating through a shared continuous latent space via learned linear projections.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • We present a feedforward graph architecture in which heterogeneous frozen large language models serve as computational nodes, communicating through a shared continuous latent space via learned linear projections.
  • Building on recent work demonstrating geometric compatibility between independently trained LLM latent spaces~\cite{armstrong2026thinking}, we extend this finding from static two-model steering to end-to-end trainable multi-node graphs, where projection matrices are optimized jointly via backpropagation through residual stream injection hooks.
  • Three small frozen models (Llama-3.2-1B, Qwen2.5-1.5B, Gemma-2-2B) encode the input into a shared latent space whose aggregate signal is injected into two larger frozen models (Phi-3-mini, Mistral-7B), whose representations feed a lightweight cross-attention output node.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against others mentioning MMLU.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

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