self

Definition

A prefix meaning the operation applies to the thing itself: self-supervised learning derives labels from the data instead of from annotators, self-attention relates positions within one sequence rather than across two, self-distillation uses a model as its own teacher. The common thread is removing an external source — of labels, of a second sequence, of a bigger teacher. What is reflexive differs per compound.

Explainers using this term

• Paper Explained: False Frontiers — Diagnosing and Breaking Co-Cheating in Self-Evolving Search AgentsFalse Frontiers: Diagnosing and Mitigating Co-Cheating in Self-Evolving Search Agents
• Paper Explained: Negative Self-Distillation — Learning to Reason by Steering Away From Your Worst SelfNegative Self-Distillation: Learning to Reason by Avoiding Flaws
• Paper Walkthrough: S³Gym — Does Self-Testing and Self-Judging Add Up to Self-Improvement?S3Gym: Can LLMs Turn Self-Testing and Self-Judging into Self-Improvement?