arXiv:2507.09816cs.LGcs.AI2025-07

研究神经网络如何高效计算布尔逻辑,发现模型自发形成密集高效电路。

Compressed Computation: Dense Circuits in a Toy Model of the Universal-AND Problem

  • 用受限隐藏维度强制模型寻找压缩计算电路
  • 训练出全连接密集结构,比理论构造更高效且可扩展
  • 适用于多种布尔运算,对稀疏性变化鲁棒,适合研究模型可解释性

神经网络具备超叠加能力——能表示超过维度数量的特征。近期工作探讨了计算层面的类似概念,提出了理论构造。但这些电路能否实际学习仍不明确。本文研究一个用于通用与门问题的简化模型,该模型需计算 $m\choose 2$ 个稀疏输入对的与运算。通过限制隐藏维度以迫使模型寻找计算高效的电路(即压缩计算)。实验发现训练过程得到一种简单解:电路完全稠密,每个神经元参与所有输出。该解自然随维度扩展,以误差率为代价换取神经元效率,并对稀疏性等关键参数变化保持鲁棒,且可推广至其他布尔运算和布尔电路。我们详细解释该解并计算其在低稀疏性下优于理论构造的原因。研究揭示了模型偏好形成的电路类型及超叠加表示的灵活性,有助于理解网络内部结构与可解释性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Neural networks are capable of superposition -- representing more features than there are dimensions. Recent work considers the analogous concept for computation instead of storage, proposing theoretical constructions. But there has been little investigation into whether these circuits can be learned in practice. In this work, we investigate a toy model for the Universal-AND problem which computes the AND of all $m\choose 2$ pairs of $m$ sparse inputs. The hidden dimension that determines the number of non-linear activations is restricted to pressure the model to find a compute-efficient circuit, called compressed computation. We find that the training process finds a simple solution that does not correspond to theoretical constructions. It is fully dense -- every neuron contributes to every output. The solution circuit naturally scales with dimension, trading off error rates for neuron efficiency. It is similarly robust to changes in sparsity and other key parameters, and extends naturally to other boolean operations and boolean circuits. We explain the found solution in detail and compute why it is more efficient than the theoretical constructions at low sparsity. Our findings shed light on the types of circuits that models like to form and the flexibility of the superposition representation. This contributes to a broader understanding of network circuitry and interpretability.

神经网络计算效率布尔电路可解释性

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