arXiv Machine Learning

Evidence for feature-specific error correction in LLMs

arXiv:2606. 24964v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Understanding the features of large language models (LLMs) is a central goal of interpretability.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 21

Exemplar Partitioning for Mechanistic Interpretability

The paper introduces Exemplar Partitioning (EP), an unsupervised technique that constructs interpretable feature dictionaries from large language model activations by clustering streamed activations into Voronoi regions defined by exemplars and their averages. EP allows comparison of dictionaries across layers, checkpoints, and architectures, and demonstrates utility in interpreting model behavior, tracking training dynamics, detecting hidden concepts, and enabling targeted interventions. Experiments on Gemma‑2‑2B and Llama‑3.1‑8B show EP can reveal how instruction tuning reorganizes harmful prompt activations, facilitate interventions that alter model responses, and achieve high concept‑detection performance while requiring far fewer construction tokens than comparable methods.

By Jessica Rumbelow
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 18

From Sparse Features to Trustworthy Proxies: Certifying SAE-Based Interpretability

arXiv:2606. 18383v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are increasingly used to extract interpretable features from language models (LMs), yet a central question remains: when can an SAE-based explanation be treated as a faithful view of an underlying frozen LM We study this through a post-hoc generalization framework that certifies the LM via a sparse proxy, obtained by replacing a native hidden activation with its pretrained SAE reconstruction.

By Dibyanayan Bandyopadhyay, Asif Ekbal
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

Sign-Aware Gated Sparse Autoencoders: Modeling Anticorrelated Features with Bi-Jump-ReLU Activations

arXiv:2605. 28149v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) extract interpretable features from Large Language Model activations, but standard variants enforce non-negative latents, so a bidirectional semantic axis (e.

By Bartosz Wieciech, Zmnako Awrahman, Marcin Czelej, Victor Hugo Jaramillo Velasquez, Wioletta Stobieniecka