Representation Engineering: A Top-Down Approach to AI Transparency
Abstract
In this paper, we identify and characterize the emerging area of representation engineering (RepE), an approach to enhancing the transparency of AI systems that draws on insights from cognitive neuroscience. RepE places population-level representations, rather than neurons or circuits, at the center of analysis, equipping us with novel methods for monitoring and manipulating high-level cognitive phenomena in deep neural networks (DNNs). We provide baselines and an initial analysis of RepE techniques, showing that they offer simple yet effective solutions for improving our understanding and control of large language models. We showcase how these methods can provide traction on a wide range of safety-relevant problems, including honesty, harmlessness, power-seeking, and more, demonstrating the promise of top-down transparency research. We hope that this work catalyzes further exploration of RepE and fosters advancements in the transparency and safety of AI systems.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2310.01405,
title = {Representation Engineering: A Top-Down Approach to AI Transparency},
author = {Andy Zou and Long Phan and Sarah Chen and James Campbell and Phillip Guo and Richard Ren and Alexander Pan and Xuwang Yin and Mantas Mazeika and Ann-Kathrin Dombrowski and Shashwat Goel and Nathaniel Li and Michael J. Byun and Zifan Wang and Alex Mallen and Steven Basart and Sanmi Koyejo and Dawn Song and Matt Fredrikson and J. Zico Kolter and Dan Hendrycks},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.01405},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Code is available at https://github.com/andyzoujm/representation-engineering