用离散向量量化捕捉跨层语义,让大模型的内部逻辑更可解释。
Cross-Layer Discrete Concept Discovery for Interpreting Language Models
- 通过离散向量量化瓶颈映射层间表示,压缩冗余特征并提取清晰概念。
- 在多个数据集上,移除发现的概念使模型准确率下降最高达93%。
- 结果被人类和大模型双重认可,可视化还原预测准确率达78%。
语言模型的可解释性因残差流导致相邻层特征线性混合与重复而受阻,单层分析难以捕捉跨层结构。现有跨层稀疏自编码器虽能缓解层间混叠,但运行于连续空间,概念分散于多个神经元且边界模糊。本文提出跨层向量量化变分自编码器(CLVQ-VAE),通过离散向量量化瓶颈将低层表示映射至高层,将重复的残差流特征凝聚为紧凑、可解释的概念向量。方法结合top-k温度采样与指数移动平均代码本更新,在控制离散潜在空间探索的同时保持代码本多样性。在ERASER-Movie、Jigsaw和AGNews三个数据集上,对编码器与解码器架构模型的评估显示,CLVQ-VAE在三类指标中均超越聚类、单层向量量化变分自编码器(VQ-VAE)及稀疏自编码器(SAE)基线:移除识别出的概念后,模型准确率最高下降93%;大语言模型在66.7%的对比中将我们的概念排第一;人类标注者根据可视化恢复模型预测的准确率为78%,优于聚类方法的54%。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Interpreting language models remains challenging due to the existence of residual stream, which linearly mixes and duplicates features across adjacent layers, causing single-layer analyses to miss this cross-layer structure. Cross-layer sparse autoencoders (SAEs) address layer mixing but operate in continuous space, where concepts split across many neurons without clear boundaries. We introduce Cross-Layer Vector Quantized-Variational Autoencoder (CLVQ-VAE), a novel framework which maps representations from a lower layer to a higher layer through a discrete vector-quantization bottleneck, collapsing duplicated residual-stream features into compact, interpretable concept vectors. Our approach combines top-k temperature-based sampling with exponential moving average (EMA) codebook updates, providing controlled exploration of the discrete latent space while maintaining codebook diversity. Across both encoder- and decoder-based models on ERASER-Movie, Jigsaw, and AGNews, CLVQ-VAE outperforms clustering, single-layer vector quantized-variational autoencoder (VQ-VAE), and sparse autoencoder (SAE) baselines across three evaluation axes: removing identified concepts drops model accuracy by up to 93%, LLM judges rank our concepts first in 66.7% of comparisons, and human annotators recover model predictions from our visualizations with 78% accuracy versus 54% for clustering.
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