arXiv:2602.01322cs.LGcs.CL2026-02被引 3

用多项式解码提升稀疏自编码器,让模型理解词语组合的深层结构。

PolySAE: Modeling Feature Interactions in Sparse Autoencoders via Polynomial Decoding

  • 在解码器中引入高阶项,捕捉特征间的组合关系。
  • 探针任务F1平均提升8%,特征分布差异扩大2–10倍。
  • 能区分语义组合与偶然共现,适合研究语言组成机制的人。

稀疏自编码器(SAE)通过将神经网络激活分解为字典原子的稀疏组合来解释表征。然而,传统SAE假设特征以线性叠加方式重构,无法捕捉组合结构:线性模型无法区分‘星巴克’是‘星’和‘咖啡’特征的组合,还是仅因共现而关联。这迫使SAE为复合概念分配整体特征,而非拆解为可解释成分。本文提出PolySAE,通过在解码器中引入高阶项建模特征交互,同时保留线性编码以保证可解释性。利用共享投影子空间的低秩张量分解,PolySAE以小参数开销(GPT2上仅3%)捕获成对及三重特征交互。在四个语言模型和三种SAE变体上,其探针任务F1平均提升约8%,重建误差相当,且类别条件特征分布的Wasserstein距离扩大2–10倍。关键的是,学习到的交互权重与共现频率相关性极低(r=0.06),远低于SAE特征协方差(r=0.82),表明多项式项能独立于表面统计捕捉组合结构。最后,交互方向可因果地引导模型输出至对应语义组合。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) interpret neural network representations by decomposing activations into sparse combinations of dictionary atoms. However, SAEs assume features combine additively through linear reconstruction, an assumption that cannot capture compositional structure: linear models cannot distinguish whether ''Starbucks'' arises from the composition of ''star'' and ''coffee'' features or merely their co-occurrence. This forces SAEs to allocate monolithic features for compound concepts rather than decomposing them into interpretable constituents. We introduce PolySAE, which extends the SAE decoder with higher-order terms to model feature interactions while preserving the linear encoder essential for interpretability. Through low-rank tensor factorization on a shared projection subspace, PolySAE captures pairwise and triple feature interactions with small parameter overhead (3% on GPT2). Across four language models and three SAE variants, PolySAE achieves an average improvement of $\sim$8% in probing F1 while maintaining comparable reconstruction error, and produces 2--10$\times$ larger Wasserstein distances between class-conditional feature distributions. Critically, learned interaction weights exhibit negligible correlation with co-occurrence frequency ($r = 0.06$ vs $r = 0.82$ for SAE feature covariance), suggesting that polynomial terms capture compositional structure largely independent of surface statistics. Finally, the learned interaction directions causally steer model outputs toward the corresponding compositional semantics.

稀疏编码组合结构可解释性语言模型

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