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Transformer-based models have become state-of-the-art tools in various machine learning tasks, including time series classification, yet their complexity makes understanding their internal decision-making challenging. Existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-27 Matīss Kalnāre , Sofoklis Kitharidis , Thomas Bäck , Niki van Stein

Interpretation of deep learning models is a very challenging problem because of their large number of parameters, complex connections between nodes, and unintelligible feature representations. Despite this, many view interpretability as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-05 Michael Tsang , James Enouen , Yan Liu

Sparse attention has been claimed to increase model interpretability under the assumption that it highlights influential inputs. Yet the attention distribution is typically over representations internal to the model rather than the inputs…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2021-06-09 Clara Meister , Stefan Lazov , Isabelle Augenstein , Ryan Cotterell

Brain-to-speech decoding models demonstrate robust performance in vocalized, mimed, and imagined speech; yet, the fundamental mechanisms via which these models capture and transmit information across different speech modalities are less…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Maryam Maghsoudi , Ayushi Mishra

With machine learning models being increasingly used to aid decision making even in high-stakes domains, there has been a growing interest in developing interpretable models. Although many supposedly interpretable models have been proposed,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-08-17 Forough Poursabzi-Sangdeh , Daniel G. Goldstein , Jake M. Hofman , Jennifer Wortman Vaughan , Hanna Wallach

Mechanistic interpretability (MI) aims to explain how neural networks work by uncovering their underlying mechanisms. As the field grows in influence, it is increasingly important to examine not just models themselves, but the assumptions,…

We describe an "interpretability illusion" that arises when analyzing the BERT model. Activations of individual neurons in the network may spuriously appear to encode a single, simple concept, when in fact they are encoding something far…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2021-04-16 Tolga Bolukbasi , Adam Pearce , Ann Yuan , Andy Coenen , Emily Reif , Fernanda Viégas , Martin Wattenberg

How interpretable are the features of leading vision models? The question is increasingly pressing as these models move from research benchmarks into high-stakes deployments, yet existing methods cannot answer it reliably. We close this gap…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Julien Colin , Lore Goetschalckx , Nuria Oliver , Thomas Serre

Mechanistic interpretability aims to understand the internal mechanisms learned by neural networks. Despite recent progress toward this goal, it remains unclear how best to decompose neural network parameters into mechanistic components. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-11 Dan Braun , Lucius Bushnaq , Stefan Heimersheim , Jake Mendel , Lee Sharkey

Prototypical parts-based networks are becoming increasingly popular due to their faithful self-explanations. However, their similarity maps are calculated in the penultimate network layer. Therefore, the receptive field of the prototype…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2023-08-17 Mikołaj Sacha , Bartosz Jura , Dawid Rymarczyk , Łukasz Struski , Jacek Tabor , Bartosz Zieliński

Mechanistic Interpretability (MI) aims to reverse-engineer model behaviors by identifying functional sub-networks. Yet, the scientific validity of these findings depends on their stability. In this work, we argue that circuit discovery is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Maxime Méloux , François Portet , Maxime Peyrard

Interpretability provides a toolset for understanding how and why neural networks behave in certain ways. However, there is little unity in the field: most studies employ ad-hoc evaluations and do not share theoretical foundations, making…

For machine learning models to be most useful in numerous sociotechnical systems, many have argued that they must be human-interpretable. However, despite increasing interest in interpretability, there remains no firm consensus on how to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-03 Andrew Slavin Ross , Nina Chen , Elisa Zhao Hang , Elena L. Glassman , Finale Doshi-Velez

Understanding AI systems' inner workings is critical for ensuring value alignment and safety. This review explores mechanistic interpretability: reverse engineering the computational mechanisms and representations learned by neural networks…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-08-27 Leonard Bereska , Efstratios Gavves

Mechanistic interpretability aims to break models into meaningful parts; verifying that two such parts implement the same computation is a prerequisite. Existing similarity measures evaluate either empirical behaviour, leaving them blind to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-15 ML Nissen Gonzalez , Melwina Albuquerque , Laurence Wroe , Jacob Meyer Cohen , Logan Riggs Smith , Thomas Dooms

Supervised machine learning models boast remarkable predictive capabilities. But can you trust your model? Will it work in deployment? What else can it tell you about the world? We want models to be not only good, but interpretable. And yet…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-03-07 Zachary C. Lipton

The attention layer in a neural network model provides insights into the model's reasoning behind its prediction, which are usually criticized for being opaque. Recently, seemingly contradictory viewpoints have emerged about the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2019-09-26 Shikhar Vashishth , Shyam Upadhyay , Gaurav Singh Tomar , Manaal Faruqui

A common approach to mechanistic interpretability is to causally manipulate model representations via targeted interventions in order to understand what those representations encode. Here we ask whether such interventions create…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Satchel Grant , Simon Jerome Han , Alexa R. Tartaglini , Christopher Potts

Architectural obfuscation - e.g., permuting hidden-state tensors, linearly transforming embedding tables, or remapping tokens - has recently gained traction as a lightweight substitute for heavyweight cryptography in privacy-preserving…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-24 Marcos Florencio , Thomas Barton

Being able to interpret, or explain, the predictions made by a machine learning model is of fundamental importance. This is especially true when there is interest in deploying data-driven models to make high-stakes decisions, e.g. in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-01 An-phi Nguyen , María Rodríguez Martínez