# ablation

/ˌəˈbɫeɪʃən/ (US) · /ɐblˈeɪtiən/ (UK) · CEFR C1 · Noun

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/ablation
Updated: 2026-09-28

## Definition

deliberately removing or disabling a component of an AI system to measure its exact purpose and importance.

For teachers: the surgical or experimental removal of a component, layer, or feature from a computational system to isolate and quantify its individual functional contribution.

## Examples

- The doctor performed a laser ablation to remove abnormal heart tissue.
- An ablation study showed that removing the attention mechanism cut translation accuracy in half.
- Layer ablation experiments demonstrate that mid-tier transformer blocks perform syntactic parsing while final layers specialize in surface token generation.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.