Sparse autoencoders reveal selective remapping of visual concepts during adaptation

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Lim, Hyesu, Choi, Jinho, Choo, Jaegul, Schneider, Steffen
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Lim, Hyesu
Choi, Jinho
Choo, Jaegul
Schneider, Steffen
author_facet Lim, Hyesu
Choi, Jinho
Choo, Jaegul
Schneider, Steffen
contents Adapting foundation models for specific purposes has become a standard approach to build machine learning systems for downstream applications. Yet, it is an open question which mechanisms take place during adaptation. Here we develop a new Sparse Autoencoder (SAE) for the CLIP vision transformer, named PatchSAE, to extract interpretable concepts at granular levels (e.g., shape, color, or semantics of an object) and their patch-wise spatial attributions. We explore how these concepts influence the model output in downstream image classification tasks and investigate how recent state-of-the-art prompt-based adaptation techniques change the association of model inputs to these concepts. While activations of concepts slightly change between adapted and non-adapted models, we find that the majority of gains on common adaptation tasks can be explained with the existing concepts already present in the non-adapted foundation model. This work provides a concrete framework to train and use SAEs for Vision Transformers and provides insights into explaining adaptation mechanisms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_05276
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sparse autoencoders reveal selective remapping of visual concepts during adaptation
Lim, Hyesu
Choi, Jinho
Choo, Jaegul
Schneider, Steffen
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Adapting foundation models for specific purposes has become a standard approach to build machine learning systems for downstream applications. Yet, it is an open question which mechanisms take place during adaptation. Here we develop a new Sparse Autoencoder (SAE) for the CLIP vision transformer, named PatchSAE, to extract interpretable concepts at granular levels (e.g., shape, color, or semantics of an object) and their patch-wise spatial attributions. We explore how these concepts influence the model output in downstream image classification tasks and investigate how recent state-of-the-art prompt-based adaptation techniques change the association of model inputs to these concepts. While activations of concepts slightly change between adapted and non-adapted models, we find that the majority of gains on common adaptation tasks can be explained with the existing concepts already present in the non-adapted foundation model. This work provides a concrete framework to train and use SAEs for Vision Transformers and provides insights into explaining adaptation mechanisms.
title Sparse autoencoders reveal selective remapping of visual concepts during adaptation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.05276