arXiv:2608.24482v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Mechanistic Localization bridges mechanistic interpretability and post-training optimization by isolating critical parameters via interpretative appr...
By Hang Chen, Jiaying Zhu, Wenya Wang
arXiv:2606. 09396v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) is an efficient approach for downstream task adaptation and often serves as the initialization stage for reinforcement learning (RL), but it can show weaker generalization than RL.
By Ke Wang, Shuangqi Li, Mathieu Salzmann, Pascal Frossard
S^3martCirc is a self‑supervised framework that jointly discovers and interprets neural circuits in large language models, rather than treating circuit discovery and functional interpretation as separate stages. It abstracts node behavior into two general computational roles that generalize across tasks and introduces a quantitative metric for assigning these roles, enabling simultaneous identification of importance and function. Experiments demonstrate that S^3martCirc outperforms existing methods in circuit discovery.
By Wendy Zheng, Yinhan He, Liang Wu, Jundong Li
arXiv:2607. 00089v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Mechanistic interpretability has produced a rich inventory of component-level analyses that characterise what neural-network components encode and how they interact.
By Hussein Chouman, Wataru Sasaki, Tomokazu Matsui, Hirohiko Suwa, Keiichi Yasumoto
arXiv:2607. 07316v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This article offers a comprehensive overview of mechanistic interpretability, an emerging field that seeks to reverse-engineer the internal algorithms of modern neural networks.
By Pranav Sawant, Jakub Krej\v{c}\'i
The paper introduces a circuit‑grounded framework that links training‑dynamics‑based data valuation with mechanistic interpretability. It defines data quality along learnability, challenge, and alignment, identifies internal model circuits that control these utilities, and uses them as controllable interfaces for data generation. The authors present SAMS, a stage‑aware scheduling method that steers circuit‑guided data to match the model’s evolving optimization needs, achieving more diverse and effective data than prompt‑based baselines on multiple‑choice QA tasks.
By Nakyung Lee, Sangwoo Hong, Jungwoo Lee
arXiv:2609.15533v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Mechanistic interpretability has become the dominant lens for understanding frontier language models, as their inner workings are complex and inheren...
By Tobias Ladner, Matthias Althoff
arXiv:2505. 17630v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Circuit localization methods aim to identify the subset of model components responsible for specific behaviors in large language models, enabling detailed mechanistic analysis.
By Joakim Edin, Casper L. Christensen, R\'obert Csord\'as, Tuukka Ruotsalo, Zhengxuan Wu, Maria Maistro, Jing Huang, Lars Maal{\o}e
arXiv:2601. 21996v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: While Mechanistic Interpretability has identified interpretable circuits in LLMs, their causal origins in training data remain elusive.
By Jianhui Chen, Yuzhang Luo, Liangming Pan
arXiv:2602. 20062v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Pretraining and fine-tuning are central stages in modern machine learning systems.
By Nicolas Anguita, Francesco Locatello, Andrew M. Saxe, Marco Mondelli, Flavia Mancini, Samuel Lippl, Clementine Domine
Activation steering offers a lightweight approach to control language models' behavior at inference time, but whether it succeeds or fails heavily depends on the prompt, concept, model, and steering configuration. Finding the regime and boundaries of successful steering typically requires expensive grid searches and post-hoc evaluation of full autoregressive rollouts.
arXiv:2510. 25013v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Mechanistic interpretability aims to reverse-engineer large language models (LLMs) into human-understandable computational circuits.
By Rabin Adhikari