arXiv:2608.23809cs.LGcs.AI2026-08中稿 · ICML

探究大模型跨语言推理的共享特征,发现其存在与模型架构相关的特异性。

Discovering Cross-Language Reasoning Invariance in LLMs with Geometry-Invariant Sparse Autoencoders

论文配图:Discovering Cross-Language Reasoning Invariance in LLMs with Geometry-Invariant Sparse Autoencoders
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用几何不变稀疏自编码器(GI-SAE)提取跨语言共性特征
  • 在多模型测试中发现特征共享程度因模型而异,且不总带来功能提升
  • 适合关注多语言模型内部机制的研究者阅读

多语言大模型能在不同语言中解决相同数学问题,但其依赖共享特征还是语言特异性计算尚不清楚。本研究基于五种来自四个模型家族的模型,在六种语言(英语、德语、法语、西班牙语、俄语、中文)的多语言小学数学(MGSM)数据集上,保留所有语言均有有效推理轨迹的问题,并回放这些轨迹以记录各层表示。通过中心核对齐(CKA)识别具有跨语言对齐的层,每层训练两种稀疏自编码器:基础重建模型和本文提出的几何不变自编码器(GI-SAE)。GI-SAE在重建损失基础上引入信息噪声对比估计(InfoNCE)损失,使同一问题的推理轨迹无论语言或词元位置,都能产生相似激活。随后通过交换不同语言间的特征值并测量输出变化(以每特征的KL散度量化),检验共享特征的功能可互换性。尽管GI-SAE在几乎所有层均提升CKA与杰卡德相似度,但更高的几何一致性并未持续带来更强的功能可互换性。结果显示,跨语言特征共享具有模型与架构依赖性,出现在不同深度;GI-SAE主要放大已存在的跨语言结构,模式为模型特异:在Qwen中增强,在Gemma中无功能收益,在Llama与Phi中呈现分层依赖效应。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Multilingual language models can solve the same mathematical problem in different languages, but it remains unclear whether they rely on shared features or on language-specific computations that only produce similar outputs. We study this question in five models from four families using the Multilingual Grade School Math (MGSM) dataset, with problems solved in English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese, retaining problems with valid reasoning traces in all six languages and replaying those traces through the model to record representations at multiple layers. For each model, we first use Centered Kernel Alignment (CKA) to identify layers with cross-language alignment. At each selected layer, we train two sparse autoencoders (SAE): a baseline reconstruction-only model and a contrastive variant introduced in this work, the Geometry-Invariant SAE (GI-SAE). GI-SAE supplements the reconstruction loss with an Information Noise-Contrastive Estimation (InfoNCE) loss that trains the encoder to produce similar activations for traces of the same problem, regardless of language or token position. We then test whether the resulting shared features are functionally interchangeable by swapping their values between languages during the model's forward pass and measuring the resulting change in output, quantified by Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence per feature. Although GI-SAE yields higher CKA and Jaccard similarity at nearly every layer, higher geometric similarity does not consistently imply greater functional interchangeability. We find that cross-language feature sharing is model- and architecture-dependent in this sample and appears at different depths in different models. GI-SAE primarily amplifies cross-language structure already present: the pattern is model-specific, with strengthening in Qwen, no functional benefit in Gemma, and mixed layer-dependent effects in Llama and Phi.

多语言模型特征共享自编码器推理机制

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