arXiv:2606.13168cs.LG2026-06

通过可学习路由揭示注意力残差的流动机制,发现训练决定路由结构。

When Does Routing Become Interpretable? Causal Probes on Block Attention Residuals

论文配图:When Does Routing Become Interpretable? Causal Probes on Block Attention Residuals
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用可学习软投票替代固定残差,让跨层路由在前向传播中可见。
  • 训练好的模型出现三种定位路由模式,而基线模型路由无内容依赖。
  • 路由质量与因果重要性不一致,需干预验证而非仅看路由分布。

Block Attention Residuals(Block AttnRes)通过将固定加性残差替换为早期深度源表示上的可学习软最大值,使跨层路由在前向传播中成为可观测张量。这为机制解释提供了诱人目标:原本间接推断的信息流现在可直接观察。我们对两个同规模(0.6B)的Block AttnRes检查点进行相同路由消融干预:一个使用Qwen3的确定性最近优先调度路径包装而成,另一个是训练从头开始、将路由纳入优化的Block AttnRes Qwen3。包装基线的路由权重与内容无关,且与调度的解析预测一致。训练后的模型则展现出三种局部化路由模式:通过早期层MLP的嵌入源路径、通过早期层注意力与MLP的当前状态路径,以及通过后期层注意力的旧历史路径。此外,平均路由质量与因果重要性之间存在明显分离:在两个子层中,贡献最大的路由切片并非因果影响最强,且有一类源家族虽有显著路由质量却在干预下无可观测因果作用。因此,架构上暴露路由是机制解释的必要条件,但非充分条件:只有当路由参与训练时才会出现结构化深度路由;即便如此,描述性路由总结也应视为待因果干预验证的候选假设,而非机制本身的证据。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Block Attention Residuals (Block AttnRes) by replace fixed additive residuals with a learned softmax over earlier depth-source representations, surfacing cross-layer routing as an inspectable tensor in the forward pass. This is a tempting interpretability target: information flow normally inferred indirectly is now directly observable. We ask whether such exposure suffices for mechanistic interpretation. We probe two same-scale ($0.6$B) Block AttnRes checkpoints under identical routing-ablation interventions: a vanilla Qwen3 inference-wrapped through a deterministic recency-bias schedule that the codebase admits as a routing-equivalent loading path, and a Block AttnRes Qwen3 trained from scratch with routing as part of optimisation. The wrapped baseline's routing weights are content-independent and reproduce the schedule's analytic prediction. The trained AttnRes checkpoint instead exhibits three localised routing motifs: an embedding-source pathway through early-layer MLP, a current-state pathway through early-layer attention and MLP, and an older-history pathway through late-layer attention. Beyond this stratification, we find a sharp dissociation between average routing mass and causal importance: in both sublayers, the largest mass slice is not the largest causal contribution, and one source family carries appreciable mass with no detectable causal role under intervention. Architectural exposure of routing is therefore necessary but not sufficient for mechanistic interpretation: structured depth routing emerges only when routing has been part of training, and even then, descriptive routing summaries should be treated as candidate hypotheses to be tested by causal interventions, not as evidence of mechanism in their own right.

注意力机制可解释性路由机制大模型

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