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Main Authors: Zang, Jianxiang, Ning, Meiling, Wei, Yongda, Dou, Shihan, Zhang, Jiazheng, Mo, Nijia, Li, Binhong, Gui, Tao, Zhang, Qi, Huang, Xuanjing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17793
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author Zang, Jianxiang
Ning, Meiling
Wei, Yongda
Dou, Shihan
Zhang, Jiazheng
Mo, Nijia
Li, Binhong
Gui, Tao
Zhang, Qi
Huang, Xuanjing
author_facet Zang, Jianxiang
Ning, Meiling
Wei, Yongda
Dou, Shihan
Zhang, Jiazheng
Mo, Nijia
Li, Binhong
Gui, Tao
Zhang, Qi
Huang, Xuanjing
contents Recently, the concept of ``compression as intelligence'' has provided a novel informatics metric perspective for language models (LMs), emphasizing that highly structured representations signify the intelligence level of LMs. However, from a geometric standpoint, the word representation space of highly compressed LMs tends to degenerate into a highly anisotropic state, which hinders the LM's ability to comprehend instructions and directly impacts its performance. We found this compression-anisotropy synchronicity is essentially the ``Compression Hacking'' in LM representations, where noise-dominated directions tend to create the illusion of high compression rates by sacrificing spatial uniformity. Based on this, we propose three refined compression metrics by incorporating geometric distortion analysis and integrate them into a self-evaluation pipeline. The refined metrics exhibit strong alignment with the LM's comprehensive capabilities, achieving Spearman correlation coefficients above 0.9, significantly outperforming both the original compression and other internal structure-based metrics. This confirms that compression hacking substantially enhances the informatics interpretation of LMs by incorporating geometric distortion of representations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_17793
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Compression Hacking: A Supplementary Perspective on Informatics Properties of Language Models from Geometric Distortion
Zang, Jianxiang
Ning, Meiling
Wei, Yongda
Dou, Shihan
Zhang, Jiazheng
Mo, Nijia
Li, Binhong
Gui, Tao
Zhang, Qi
Huang, Xuanjing
Computation and Language
Recently, the concept of ``compression as intelligence'' has provided a novel informatics metric perspective for language models (LMs), emphasizing that highly structured representations signify the intelligence level of LMs. However, from a geometric standpoint, the word representation space of highly compressed LMs tends to degenerate into a highly anisotropic state, which hinders the LM's ability to comprehend instructions and directly impacts its performance. We found this compression-anisotropy synchronicity is essentially the ``Compression Hacking'' in LM representations, where noise-dominated directions tend to create the illusion of high compression rates by sacrificing spatial uniformity. Based on this, we propose three refined compression metrics by incorporating geometric distortion analysis and integrate them into a self-evaluation pipeline. The refined metrics exhibit strong alignment with the LM's comprehensive capabilities, achieving Spearman correlation coefficients above 0.9, significantly outperforming both the original compression and other internal structure-based metrics. This confirms that compression hacking substantially enhances the informatics interpretation of LMs by incorporating geometric distortion of representations.
title Compression Hacking: A Supplementary Perspective on Informatics Properties of Language Models from Geometric Distortion
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17793