English
Related papers

Related papers: Switched linear encoding with rectified linear aut…

200 papers

Large Language Models (LLMs) are traditionally viewed as black-box algorithms, therefore reducing trustworthiness and obscuring potential approaches to increasing performance on downstream tasks. In this work, we apply an effective LLM…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-10 Shun Wang , Tyler Loakman , Youbo Lei , Yi Liu , Bohao Yang , Yuting Zhao , Dong Yang , Chenghua Lin

We present Universal Sparse Autoencoders (USAEs), a framework for uncovering and aligning interpretable concepts spanning multiple pretrained deep neural networks. Unlike existing concept-based interpretability methods, which focus on a…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-03-20 Harrish Thasarathan , Julian Forsyth , Thomas Fel , Matthew Kowal , Konstantinos G. Derpanis

Artificial neural networks (ANNs), specifically deep learning networks, have often been labeled as black boxes due to the fact that the internal representation of the data is not easily interpretable. In our work, we illustrate that an ANN,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-25 Edward Kim , Connor Onweller , Andrew O'Brien , Kathleen McCoy

The autoencoder is an effective unsupervised learning model which is widely used in deep learning. It is well known that an autoencoder with a single fully-connected hidden layer, a linear activation function and a squared error cost…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-01-01 Elad Plaut

The cosine similarity between a large language model's hidden activations before and after Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) remains very high. This, at first glance, suggests that SFT leaves the model's activation geometry largely undisturbed.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Ruhaan Chopra

Recent works have proposed that activations in language models can be modelled as sparse linear combinations of vectors corresponding to features of input text. Under this assumption, these works aimed to reconstruct feature directions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-17 Mingyang Deng , Lucas Tao , Joe Benton

Combining simple elements from the literature, we define a linear model that is geared toward sparse data, in particular implicit feedback data for recommender systems. We show that its training objective has a closed-form solution, and…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2019-05-10 Harald Steck

Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) are widely employed for mechanistic interpretability and model steering. Within this context, steering is by design performed by means of decoding altered SAE intermediate representations. This procedure…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-08 Antonio Bărbălau , Cristian Daniel Păduraru , Teodor Poncu , Alexandru Tifrea , Elena Burceanu

Autoencoders are unsupervised machine learning circuits whose learning goal is to minimize a distortion measure between inputs and outputs. Linear autoencoders can be defined over any field and only real-valued linear autoencoder have been…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2014-03-19 Pierre Baldi , Zhiqin Lu

The following work presents how autoencoding all the possible hidden activations of a network for a given problem can provide insight about its structure, behavior, and vulnerabilities. The method, termed self-introspection, can show that a…

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are a useful tool for uncovering human-interpretable features in the activations of large language models (LLMs). While some expect SAEs to find the true underlying features used by a model, our research shows…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-31 Gonçalo Paulo , Nora Belrose

Decomposing model activations into interpretable components is a key open problem in mechanistic interpretability. Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are a popular method for decomposing the internal activations of trained transformers into sparse,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-26 Connor Kissane , Robert Krzyzanowski , Joseph Isaac Bloom , Arthur Conmy , Neel Nanda

The rapid advancements in transformer-based language models have revolutionized natural language processing, yet understanding the internal mechanisms of these models remains a significant challenge. This paper explores the application of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-14 Edith Natalia Villegas Garcia , Alessio Ansuini

Large Language Models (LLMs) have transformed natural language processing, yet their internal mechanisms remain largely opaque. Recently, mechanistic interpretability has attracted significant attention from the research community as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-24 Dong Shu , Xuansheng Wu , Haiyan Zhao , Daking Rai , Ziyu Yao , Ninghao Liu , Mengnan Du

Sparse coding networks, which utilize unsupervised learning to maximize coding efficiency, have successfully reproduced response properties found in primary visual cortex \cite{AN:OlshausenField96}. However, conventional sparse coding…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2011-05-25 William K. Coulter , Christopher J. Hillar , Friedrich T. Sommer

Autoencoding is a popular method in representation learning. Conventional autoencoders employ symmetric encoding-decoding procedures and a simple Euclidean latent space to detect hidden low-dimensional structures in an unsupervised way.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-07 Stefan C. Schonsheck , Scott Mahan , Timo Klock , Alexander Cloninger , Rongjie Lai

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are widely used in mechanistic interpretability research for large language models; however, the state-of-the-art method of using $k$-sparse autoencoders lacks a theoretical grounding for selecting the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-11 Sewoong Lee , Adam Davies , Marc E. Canby , Julia Hockenmaier

Sparse autoencoders are a standard tool for uncovering interpretable latent representations in neural networks. Yet, their interpretation depends on the inputs, making their isolated study incomplete. Polynomials offer a solution; they…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Thomas Dooms , Ward Gauderis

Parameterized mathematical models play a central role in understanding and design of complex information systems. However, they often cannot take into account the intricate interactions innate to such systems. On the contrary, purely…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-13 Shahin Khobahi , Arindam Bose , Mojtaba Soltanalian

Transformer-based models generate hidden states that are difficult to interpret. In this work, we analyze hidden states and modify them at inference, with a focus on motion forecasting. We use linear probing to analyze whether interpretable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-19 Omer Sahin Tas , Royden Wagner