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Auteurs principaux: Härle, Ruben, Friedrich, Felix, Brack, Manuel, Wäldchen, Stephan, Deiseroth, Björn, Schramowski, Patrick, Kersting, Kristian
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19382
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author Härle, Ruben
Friedrich, Felix
Brack, Manuel
Wäldchen, Stephan
Deiseroth, Björn
Schramowski, Patrick
Kersting, Kristian
author_facet Härle, Ruben
Friedrich, Felix
Brack, Manuel
Wäldchen, Stephan
Deiseroth, Björn
Schramowski, Patrick
Kersting, Kristian
contents There is growing interest in leveraging mechanistic interpretability and controllability to better understand and influence the internal dynamics of large language models (LLMs). However, current methods face fundamental challenges in reliably localizing and manipulating feature representations. Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) have recently emerged as a promising direction for feature extraction at scale, yet they, too, are limited by incomplete feature isolation and unreliable monosemanticity. To systematically quantify these limitations, we introduce Feature Monosemanticity Score (FMS), a novel metric to quantify feature monosemanticity in latent representation. Building on these insights, we propose Guided Sparse Autoencoders (G-SAE), a method that conditions latent representations on labeled concepts during training. We demonstrate that reliable localization and disentanglement of target concepts within the latent space improve interpretability, detection of behavior, and control. Specifically, our evaluations on toxicity detection, writing style identification, and privacy attribute recognition show that G-SAE not only enhances monosemanticity but also enables more effective and fine-grained steering with less quality degradation. Our findings provide actionable guidelines for measuring and advancing mechanistic interpretability and control of LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_19382
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Measuring and Guiding Monosemanticity
Härle, Ruben
Friedrich, Felix
Brack, Manuel
Wäldchen, Stephan
Deiseroth, Björn
Schramowski, Patrick
Kersting, Kristian
Computation and Language
There is growing interest in leveraging mechanistic interpretability and controllability to better understand and influence the internal dynamics of large language models (LLMs). However, current methods face fundamental challenges in reliably localizing and manipulating feature representations. Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) have recently emerged as a promising direction for feature extraction at scale, yet they, too, are limited by incomplete feature isolation and unreliable monosemanticity. To systematically quantify these limitations, we introduce Feature Monosemanticity Score (FMS), a novel metric to quantify feature monosemanticity in latent representation. Building on these insights, we propose Guided Sparse Autoencoders (G-SAE), a method that conditions latent representations on labeled concepts during training. We demonstrate that reliable localization and disentanglement of target concepts within the latent space improve interpretability, detection of behavior, and control. Specifically, our evaluations on toxicity detection, writing style identification, and privacy attribute recognition show that G-SAE not only enhances monosemanticity but also enables more effective and fine-grained steering with less quality degradation. Our findings provide actionable guidelines for measuring and advancing mechanistic interpretability and control of LLMs.
title Measuring and Guiding Monosemanticity
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19382