cs.LGOct 12, 2026

The Bell Boundary of Shared Representations

Authors: Yang Wu, Hanyu Zhao, Yazhou Zhang, Yuexian Hou

Organizations: Tianjin University, China

Abstract

When does a shared representation become insufficient for jointly supporting multiple tasks? This question lies at the heart of multi-task learning models. Although task interference in shared representations has been widely observed, its onset, measurable form, and capacity boundary remain poorly understood. In this paper, we revisit this problem through the lens of Bell's theorem. We show that if four binary task outcomes can be jointly represented by a common shared representation, their correlations must satisfy the classical CHSH bound ∣S∣≤2|S|\leq2. We introduce NCnet, a controlled multi-task model for studying how representational capacity affects task compatibility. Experiments reveal a clear capacity-dependent transition. Once nontrivial task fitting emerges, constrained capacity can yield ∣S∣>2|S|>2. As capacity further increases, these exceedances progressively disappear and SS returns to the bounded region. This systematic pattern provides evidence that limited representational capacity is an important source of the observed incompatibility. We observe similar transitions across CNNs, PLMs, and LLMs, suggesting that the phenomenon extends beyond the controlled NCnet setting. We refer to this capacity-dependent transition as the Bell Boundary, providing a measurable diagnostic for representation bottlenecks, task incompatibility, and capacity allocation in multi-task models.

Figures & tables

Appendix figures & tables11 assets

Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.

Appendix

Explore similar work

CardsList
  1. The Information-Theoretic Benefit of Shared Representations under Orthogonality Constraints

    Jun 14, 2026Thomas Dittrich, Oliver Potocki, Philipp GrohsShared Representation LearningRepresentation Learning

  2. An Empirical Study and Theoretical Explanation on Task-Level Model-Merging Collapse

    Mar 10, 2026Yuan Cao, Dezhi Ran, Yuzhe Guo +5Language Model MergingModel Merging