Enhancing Neural Network Interpretability with Feature-Aligned Sparse Autoencoders
Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) have shown promise in improving the interpretability of neural network activations, but can learn features that are not features of the input, limiting their effectiveness. We propose \textsc{Mutual Feature Regularization} \textbf{(MFR)}, a regularization technique for improving feature learning by encouraging SAEs trained in parallel to learn similar features. We motivate \textsc{MFR} by showing that features learned by multiple SAEs are more likely to correlate with features of the input. By training on synthetic data with known features of the input, we show that \textsc{MFR} can help SAEs learn those features, as we can directly compare the features learned by the SAE with the input features for the synthetic data. We then scale \textsc{MFR} to SAEs that are trained to denoise electroencephalography (EEG) data and SAEs that are trained to reconstruct GPT-2 Small activations. We show that \textsc{MFR} can improve the reconstruction loss of SAEs by up to 21.21\% on GPT-2 Small, and 6.67\% on EEG data. Our results suggest that the similarity between features learned by different SAEs can be leveraged to improve SAE training, thereby enhancing performance and the usefulness of SAEs for model interpretability.
Code (1)
Tasks
EEGMethods 이 논문이 사용한 방법론
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Interpretable and Steerable Concept Bottleneck Sparse Autoencoders
Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) promise a unified approach for mechanistic interpretability, concept discovery, and model steering in LLMs and LVLMs. However, realizing this potential requires learned features to be both inte…
Image GenerationImproving Robustness In Sparse Autoencoders via Masked Regularization
Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are widely used in mechanistic interpretability to project LLM activations onto sparse latent spaces. However, sparsity alone is an imperfect proxy for interpretability, and current training ob…
Re-envisioning Euclid Galaxy Morphology: Identifying and Interpreting Features with Sparse Autoencoders
Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) can efficiently identify candidate monosemantic features from pretrained neural networks for galaxy morphology. We demonstrate this on Euclid Q1 images using both supervised (Zoobot) and new se…
Image ReconstructionSPARC: Concept-Aligned Sparse Autoencoders for Cross-Model and Cross-Modal Interpretability
Understanding how different AI models encode the same high-level concepts, such as objects or attributes, remains challenging because each model typically produces its own isolated representation. Existing interpretabili…
Cross-Modal RetrievalStable and Steerable Sparse Autoencoders with Weight Regularization
Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) are widely used to extract human-interpretable features from neural network activations, but their learned features can vary substantially across random seeds and training choices. To improve s…