Probing for Representation Manifolds in Superposition

LLM Model Editing Other LLM
本文提出了“流形探针”(Manifold Probe),一种用于在叠加表征(superposition)中发现表征流形的有监督方法。该方法将线性回归探针(linear regression probes)加以推广:首先学习某一概念所对应特征的空间——这些特征可从模型表征中线性预测得到;继而学习用于编码这些特征的具体方向。我们在 Llama 2-7b 模型关于时间和空间的表征上应用了该探针,结果发现,在两种情况下均存在能够线性表征一组可解释特征的流形。以时间为例,我们进一步表明:通过沿该流形进行定向干预(steering),可显著影响模型对著名歌曲、电影及图书发行年份的续写结果;这一结果为如下结论提供了实证支持:流形探针确实能够识别出那些在模型行为中具有因果作用的表征流形。
This paper introduces the Manifold Probe, a supervised method for discovering representation manifolds in superposition. The method generalizes linear regression probes by learning the space of features of a concept that can be linearly predicted from the representations, and then learning the directions used to encode them. We demonstrate the probe on representations of time and space in Llama 2-7b, finding manifolds which linearly represent an interpretable set of features in each case. In the case of time, we show that by steering along the manifold, we can influence the model's completions about the years in which famous songs, movies and books were released, providing evidence that the Manifold Probe can discover manifolds which are causally involved in model behaviour.
许愿