Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sawmya, Shashata, Adler, Micah, Shavit, Nir
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19440
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Table of Contents:
  • This paper studies the emergence of interpretable categorical features within large language models (LLMs), analyzing their behavior across training checkpoints (time), transformer layers (space), and varying model sizes (scale). Using sparse autoencoders for mechanistic interpretability, we identify when and where specific semantic concepts emerge within neural activations. Results indicate clear temporal and scale-specific thresholds for feature emergence across multiple domains. Notably, spatial analysis reveals unexpected semantic reactivation, with early-layer features re-emerging at later layers, challenging standard assumptions about representational dynamics in transformer models.