用稀疏自编码器揭示智能体如何隐式理解规则
Interpretable GOHR Agents via Sparse Autoencoders

- 用稀疏自编码器分析决策令牌嵌入,挖掘内部表征
- 单个编码维度对应具体策略,如试探规则并根据反馈切换
- 无需标签也能自动识别形状与目标桶等关键概念
解释学习决策系统的核心挑战在于判断其内部表征是否包含能解释行为的概念。我们对一个在隐藏规则游戏(GOHR)中基于分词自回归Transformer的智能体进行了可解释性实验。该任务包含两个隐藏规则,均将物体形状映射到目标桶,但使用不同排列。策略在来自这两个规则的采样回合上训练,并以固定权重评估,未获得规则标签,也不使用显式规则分类器;任何规则信息必须从交互历史中隐式推断。在此设定下,正确规则需在执行一次有信息量的动作并观察接受/拒绝反馈后才能确定。在该条件下,对智能体决策令牌嵌入训练的稀疏自编码器(SAEs)成功恢复了这一结构。当对保留的决策进行简单概念标注(如所选形状或目标桶)时,高度选择特定概念的SAE维度覆盖了大部分该概念存在的决策。个别SAE维度还对应于可解释的策略,例如试探一个规则假设并在负反馈后切换。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
A central challenge in interpreting learned decision-making systems is to determine whether their internal representations contain concepts that help explain their behavior. We report interpretability experiments for a tokenized autoregressive Transformer agent in the Game of Hidden Rules (GOHR). We focus on a compact two-rule task in which both hidden rules map object shapes to target buckets, but with different permutations. The policy is trained on episodes sampled from these two hidden rules and then evaluated with fixed weights. It is never given a rule label and does not use an explicit rule classifier; any rule information must be inferred implicitly from interaction history. In this setting, the correct rule is not identifiable before the agent tries an informative move and observes accept/reject feedback. Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) trained on the agent's decision-token embeddings recover this structure. When held-out decisions are labeled by simple concepts such as the chosen shape or bucket, SAE dimensions that are highly selective for a concept cover most decisions where that concept is present. Individual SAE dimensions also correspond to interpretable strategies such as probing one rule hypothesis and switching after negative feedback.
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。