Related papers: Spectral Probe-Circuits: A Three-Step Recipe for I…
Transformer language models contain localized reasoning circuits, contiguous layer blocks that improve reasoning when duplicated at inference time. Finding these circuits currently requires brute-force sweeps costing 25 GPU hours per model.…
This paper introduces an efficient and robust method for discovering interpretable circuits in large language models using discrete sparse autoencoders. Our approach addresses key limitations of existing techniques, namely computational…
To help address the growing demand for ever-longer sequence lengths in transformer models, Liu et al. recently proposed Ring Attention, an exact attention algorithm capable of overcoming per-device memory bottle- necks by distributing…
In mechanistic interpretability, recent work scrutinizes transformer "circuits" - sparse, mono or multi layer sub computations, that may reflect human understandable functions. Yet, these network circuits are rarely acid-tested for their…
We present a training-free method for detecting valid mathematical reasoning in large language models through spectral analysis of attention patterns. By treating attention matrices as adjacency matrices of dynamic graphs over tokens, we…
Mechanistic interpretability aims to understand neural networks by identifying which learned features mediate specific behaviors. Attribution graphs reveal these feature pathways, but interpreting them requires extensive manual analysis --…
Transformer-based language models excel at both recall (retrieving memorized facts) and reasoning (performing multi-step inference), but whether these abilities rely on distinct internal mechanisms remains unclear. Distinguishing recall…
We introduce directional routing, a lightweight mechanism that gives each transformer attention head learned suppression directions controlled by a shared router, at 3.9% parameter cost. We train a 433M-parameter model alongside an…
The attention mechanism is considered the backbone of the widely-used Transformer architecture. It contextualizes the input by computing input-specific attention matrices. We find that this mechanism, while powerful and elegant, is not as…
Transformers have exhibited exceptional capabilities in sequence modeling tasks, leveraging self-attention and in-context learning. Critical to this success are induction heads, attention circuits that enable copying tokens based on their…
Transformer has become the dominant architecture for sequence modeling, yet a detailed understanding of how its structural parameters influence expressive power remains limited. In this work, we study the approximation properties of…
Some transformer attention heads appear to function as membership testers, dedicating themselves to answering the question "has this token appeared before in the context?" We identify these heads across four language models (GPT-2 small,…
Multi-head attention, a collection of several attention mechanisms that independently attend to different parts of the input, is the key ingredient in the Transformer. Recent work has shown, however, that a large proportion of the heads in…
Different transformer architectures implement identical linguistic computations via distinct connectivity patterns, yielding model imprinted ``computational fingerprints'' detectable through spectral analysis. Using graph signal processing…
Understanding the internal circuits that language models use to solve tasks remains a central challenge in mechanistic interpretability. A crucial part of finding circuits is understanding why each attention head attends where it does. To…
Transformers resist surgical control. Ablating an attention head identified as critical for capitalization produces minimal behavioral change because distributed redundancy compensates for damage. This Hydra effect renders interpretability…
This paper presents a spectral attention-driven reinforcement learning based intelligent method for effective and efficient detection of important signals in a wideband spectrum. In the work presented in this paper, it is assumed that the…
Following the successful application of vision transformers in multiple computer vision tasks, these models have drawn the attention of the signal processing community. This is because signals are often represented as spectrograms (e.g.…
Sequence modeling faces challenges in capturing long-range dependencies across diverse tasks. Recent linear and transformer-based forecasters have shown superior performance in time series forecasting. However, they are constrained by their…
Mechanistic interpretability aims to reverse-engineer large language models (LLMs) into human-understandable computational circuits. However, the complexity of pretrained models often obscures the minimal mechanisms required for specific…