Steering CLIP's vision transformer with sparse autoencoders
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866910909308338176 |
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| author | Joseph, Sonia Suresh, Praneet Goldfarb, Ethan Hufe, Lorenz Gandelsman, Yossi Graham, Robert Bzdok, Danilo Samek, Wojciech Richards, Blake Aaron |
| author_facet | Joseph, Sonia Suresh, Praneet Goldfarb, Ethan Hufe, Lorenz Gandelsman, Yossi Graham, Robert Bzdok, Danilo Samek, Wojciech Richards, Blake Aaron |
| contents | While vision models are highly capable, their internal mechanisms remain poorly understood -- a challenge which sparse autoencoders (SAEs) have helped address in language, but which remains underexplored in vision. We address this gap by training SAEs on CLIP's vision transformer and uncover key differences between vision and language processing, including distinct sparsity patterns for SAEs trained across layers and token types. We then provide the first systematic analysis on the steerability of CLIP's vision transformer by introducing metrics to quantify how precisely SAE features can be steered to affect the model's output. We find that 10-15\% of neurons and features are steerable, with SAEs providing thousands more steerable features than the base model. Through targeted suppression of SAE features, we then demonstrate improved performance on three vision disentanglement tasks (CelebA, Waterbirds, and typographic attacks), finding optimal disentanglement in middle model layers, and achieving state-of-the-art performance on defense against typographic attacks. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_08729 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Steering CLIP's vision transformer with sparse autoencoders Joseph, Sonia Suresh, Praneet Goldfarb, Ethan Hufe, Lorenz Gandelsman, Yossi Graham, Robert Bzdok, Danilo Samek, Wojciech Richards, Blake Aaron Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning While vision models are highly capable, their internal mechanisms remain poorly understood -- a challenge which sparse autoencoders (SAEs) have helped address in language, but which remains underexplored in vision. We address this gap by training SAEs on CLIP's vision transformer and uncover key differences between vision and language processing, including distinct sparsity patterns for SAEs trained across layers and token types. We then provide the first systematic analysis on the steerability of CLIP's vision transformer by introducing metrics to quantify how precisely SAE features can be steered to affect the model's output. We find that 10-15\% of neurons and features are steerable, with SAEs providing thousands more steerable features than the base model. Through targeted suppression of SAE features, we then demonstrate improved performance on three vision disentanglement tasks (CelebA, Waterbirds, and typographic attacks), finding optimal disentanglement in middle model layers, and achieving state-of-the-art performance on defense against typographic attacks. |
| title | Steering CLIP's vision transformer with sparse autoencoders |
| topic | Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.08729 |