将稀疏特征转化为大模型开发工具,实现可控、可测、可优化。
Qwen-Scope: Turning Sparse Features into Development Tools for Large Language Models

- 用稀疏自编码器将模型激活分解为可解释特征
- 在推理时通过特征方向控制语言风格与偏好
- 适合模型开发者、安全研究者及可解释性研究者
大语言模型虽在多任务中表现卓越,但其内部决策过程仍高度不透明,限制了对模型的检视、控制与系统性改进。这一问题催生了机制可解释性研究,其中稀疏自编码器(SAEs)成为将模型激活分解为稀疏、可解释特征表示的最有前景工具之一。本文推出 Qwen-Scope,一个基于 Qwen3 与 Qwen3.5 系列共7个模型变体的开源 SAE 工具套件,包含14组 SAEs,覆盖密集与专家混合架构。在此基础上,我们证明 SAE 可超越事后分析,作为实际开发接口:(i) 推理时控制,通过特征方向调节语言、概念与偏好而无需修改权重;(ii) 评估分析,激活的 SAE 特征可作为基准冗余与能力覆盖的表征级代理;(iii) 数据驱动流程,支持多语言毒性分类与安全导向数据合成;(iv) 后训练优化,将 SAE 信号融入监督微调与强化学习目标,缓解代码切换与重复等不良行为。这些结果表明,SAE 不仅是事后分析工具,更是诊断、控制、评估与改进大模型的可复用表征接口。通过开源 Qwen-Scope,我们旨在推动机制研究并加速模型内核与下游行为间的实用工作流。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language models have achieved remarkable capabilities across diverse tasks, yet their internal decision-making processes remain largely opaque, limiting our ability to inspect, control, and systematically improve them. This opacity motivates a growing body of research in mechanistic interpretability, with sparse autoencoders (SAEs) emerging as one of the most promising tools for decomposing model activations into sparse, interpretable feature representations. We introduce Qwen-Scope, an open-source suite of SAEs built on the Qwen model family, comprising 14 groups of SAEs across 7 model variants from the Qwen3 and Qwen3.5 series, covering both dense and mixture-of-expert architectures. Built on top of these SAEs, we show that SAEs can go beyond post-hoc analysis to serve as practical interfaces for model development along four directions: (i) inference-time steering, where SAE feature directions control language, concepts, and preferences without modifying model weights; (ii) evaluation analysis, where activated SAE features provide a representation-level proxy for benchmark redundancy and capability coverage; (iii) data-centric workflows, where SAE features support multilingual toxicity classification and safety-oriented data synthesis; and (iv) post-training optimization, where SAE-derived signals are incorporated into supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning objectives to mitigate undesirable behaviors such as code-switching and repetition. Together, these results demonstrate that SAEs can serve not only as post-hoc analysis tools, but also as reusable representation-level interfaces for diagnosing, controlling, evaluating, and improving large language models. By open-sourcing Qwen-Scope, we aim to support mechanistic research and accelerate practical workflows that connect model internals to downstream behavior.
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