GLUScope: A Tool for Analyzing GLU Neurons in Transformer Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gerstner, Sebastian, Schütze, Hinrich
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Gerstner, Sebastian
Schütze, Hinrich
author_facet Gerstner, Sebastian
Schütze, Hinrich
contents We present GLUScope, an open-source tool for analyzing neurons in Transformer-based language models, intended for interpretability researchers. We focus on more recent models than previous tools do; specifically we consider gated activation functions such as SwiGLU. This introduces a new challenge: understanding positive activations is not enough. Instead, both the gate and the in activation of a neuron can be positive or negative, leading to four different possible sign combinations that in some cases have quite different functionalities. Accordingly, for any neuron, our tool shows text examples for each of the four sign combinations, and indicates how often each combination occurs. We describe examples of how our tool can lead to novel insights. A demo is available at https: //sjgerstner.github.io/gluscope.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_23826
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GLUScope: A Tool for Analyzing GLU Neurons in Transformer Language Models
Gerstner, Sebastian
Schütze, Hinrich
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
We present GLUScope, an open-source tool for analyzing neurons in Transformer-based language models, intended for interpretability researchers. We focus on more recent models than previous tools do; specifically we consider gated activation functions such as SwiGLU. This introduces a new challenge: understanding positive activations is not enough. Instead, both the gate and the in activation of a neuron can be positive or negative, leading to four different possible sign combinations that in some cases have quite different functionalities. Accordingly, for any neuron, our tool shows text examples for each of the four sign combinations, and indicates how often each combination occurs. We describe examples of how our tool can lead to novel insights. A demo is available at https: //sjgerstner.github.io/gluscope.
title GLUScope: A Tool for Analyzing GLU Neurons in Transformer Language Models
topic Computation and Language
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.23826