对比稀疏与密集模型预训练过程,发现稀疏模型更早形成稳定知识结构。
Deconstructing Pre-training: Knowledge Attribution Analysis in MoE and Dense Models
- 用神经元级归因法分析知识增长路径
- 1%关键神经元贡献超45%知识更新
- 适合关注模型可解释性与高效训练的研究者
混合专家(MoE)架构将模型容量与单次计算解耦,突破密集模型的计算瓶颈。为探究其在预训练中如何塑造知识获取过程,我们提出门控对数概率增加(Gated-LPI)方法,实现神经元层面的对数概率增长分解。通过对120万训练步(约5.0万亿词)的MoE模型与60万训练步(约2.5万亿词)的密集模型进行时间解析比较,发现三个规律:(1) 低熵主干结构:约1%的MoE神经元捕获超过45%的正向更新,构成高价值核心,密集模型中不存在此现象;(2) 早期固化:MoE模型在10万步内即锁定重要性分布,而密集模型全程波动剧烈;(3) 功能鲁棒性:屏蔽十个最重要的MoE注意力头仅导致关系推理命中率下降<10%,而密集模型下降超50%,表明稀疏性促进分布式而非脆弱的知识存储。这些模式共同表明,稀疏性从训练初期就构建出内在稳定且分布式的计算骨干,有助于弥合稀疏架构与训练可解释性之间的差距。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architectures decouple model capacity from per-token computation, enabling scaling beyond the computational limits imposed by dense scaling laws. Yet how MoE architectures shape knowledge acquisition during pre-training, and how this process differs from dense architectures, remains unknown. To address this issue, we introduce Gated-LPI (Log-Probability Increase), a neuron-level attribution metric that decomposes log-probability increase across neurons. We present a time-resolved comparison of knowledge acquisition dynamics in MoE and dense architectures, tracking checkpoints over 1.2M training steps (~ 5.0T tokens) and 600K training steps (~ 2.5T tokens), respectively. Our experiments uncover three patterns: (1) Low-entropy backbone. The top approximately 1% of MoE neurons capture over 45% of positive updates, forming a high-utility core, which is absent in the dense baseline. (2) Early consolidation. The MoE model locks into a stable importance profile within < 100K steps, whereas the dense model remains volatile throughout training. (3) Functional robustness. Masking the ten most important MoE attention heads reduces relational HIT@10 by < 10%, compared with > 50% for the dense model, showing that sparsity fosters distributed -- rather than brittle -- knowledge storage. These patterns collectively demonstrate that sparsity fosters an intrinsically stable and distributed computational backbone from early in training, helping bridge the gap between sparse architectures and training-time interpretability.
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