arXiv:2606.24026cs.AI2026-06

用语言模型代理自动解释神经网络电路功能,提升可解释性研究效率。

Can Language Model Agents be Helpful Circuit Explainers in Mechanistic Interpretability?

论文配图:Can Language Model Agents be Helpful Circuit Explainers in Mechanistic Interpretability?
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 设计迭代式解释流程:观察→假设→验证,逐层分析组件功能
  • 在84个合成电路上实现组件与任务级解释,多模型表现差异显著
  • 适合研究可解释性、提示工程及大模型推理能力的学者使用

机制可解释性在自动定位神经网络电路方面已取得显著进展,但解释已定位组件的功能仍费时且难以标准化。本文探讨语言模型(LM)代理是否可在电路识别后协助解释。我们构建了AgenticInterpBench基准,包含84个半合成Transformer电路和163个组件级标注。提出HyVE(Hypothesize, Validate, Explain)框架,通过观察、假设生成与因果验证的迭代循环,最终输出组件级解释和电路级任务描述。在四种LM主干中,HyVE均能恢复有用解释,但无统一最优模型。分析表明,强模型通常基于观察生成合理假设,失败多出现在验证环节,如验证计划不完整、代码执行错误或假设未解决。对Llama-3-8B中算术电路的案例研究显示,该方法可推广至自然训练模型。总体而言,语言模型代理在电路解释中前景广阔,但可靠验证仍是关键瓶颈。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Mechanistic interpretability has made substantial progress in automatically localizing circuits, but explaining what localized components do remains labor-intensive and difficult to standardize. In this work, we study whether language model (LM) agents can assist with this explanation problem once a circuit has already been identified. We introduce AgenticInterpBench, a benchmark for circuit explanation built from 84 semi-synthetic transformer circuits with 163 component-level annotations. We propose HyVE (Hypothesize, Validate, Explain), an agentic explainer that analyzes each component through an iterative loop of observation, hypothesis generation, and causal validation, eventually producing a component-level explanation and a circuit-level task description. Across four LM backbones, HyVE recovers useful component- and task-level explanations, but no backbone is uniformly best. Our analysis shows that strong backbones usually form observation-grounded hypotheses, while failures more often arise later in the validation loop, through incomplete validation plans, code execution errors, or unresolved hypotheses. A case study on an arithmetic circuit in Llama-3-8B shows that the same formulation can extend beyond semi-synthetic benchmarks to naturally trained models. Overall, LM agents are promising circuit explainers, but reliable validation remains the key obstacle.

可解释性语言模型神经网络代理系统

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。