Sebastian Raschka 2026预测：Transformer统治依旧，但扩散模型正悄然崛起

Core Insights - The article discusses the evolving landscape of large language models (LLMs) as of 2026, highlighting a shift from the dominance of the Transformer architecture to a focus on efficiency and hybrid architectures [1][4][5]. Group 1: Transformer Architecture and Efficiency - The Transformer architecture is expected to maintain its status as the foundation of the AI ecosystem for at least the next few years, supported by mature toolchains and optimization strategies [4]. - Recent developments indicate a shift towards hybrid architectures and efficiency improvements, rather than a complete overhaul of existing models [5]. - The industry is increasingly focusing on mixed architectures and efficiency, as demonstrated by models like DeepSeek V3 and R1, which utilize mixture of experts (MoE) and multi-head latent attention (MLA) to reduce inference costs while maintaining large parameter counts [7]. Group 2: Linear and Sparse Attention Mechanisms - The standard Transformer attention mechanism has a complexity of O(N^2), leading to exponential growth in computational costs with increasing context length [9]. - New models like Qwen3-Next and Kimi Linear are adopting hybrid strategies that combine efficient linear layers with full attention layers to balance long-distance dependencies and inference speed [14]. Group 3: Diffusion Language Models - Diffusion language models (DLMs) are gaining attention for their ability to generate tokens quickly and cost-effectively through parallel generation, contrasting with the serial generation of autoregressive models [12]. - Despite their advantages, DLMs face challenges in integrating tool calls within response chains due to their simultaneous generation nature [15]. - Research indicates that DLMs may outperform autoregressive models when high-quality data is scarce, as they can benefit from multiple training epochs without overfitting [24][25]. Group 4: Data Scarcity and Learning Efficiency - The concept of "Crossover" suggests that while autoregressive models learn faster with ample data, DLMs excel when data is limited, achieving significant accuracy on benchmarks with relatively small datasets [27]. - DLMs demonstrate that increased training epochs do not necessarily lead to a decline in downstream task performance, offering a potential solution in an era of data scarcity [28].