Explaining Latents in Turing-LLM-1.0-254M with Pre-Defined Function Types

Daniel Davies, Ashwarya Maratha

We introduce a novel framework for explaining latents in the Turing-LLM-1.0-254M model based on a predefined set of function types, allowing for a more human-readable “source code” of the model’s internal mechanisms. By categorising latents using multiple function types, we move towards mechanistic interpretability that does not rely on potentially unreliable explanations generated by other language models. Evaluation strategies include generating unseen sequences using variants of Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct provided by GoodFire AI to test the activation patterns of latents, thereby validating the accuracy and reliability of the explanations. Our methods successfully explained up to 95% of a random subset of latents in layers, with results suggesting meaningful explanations were discovered.

Reviewer's Comments

Reviewer's Comments

Arrow
Arrow
Arrow

Simon Lermen

This paper focuses on labeling, i.e., writing explanations for features or latents. This is an interesting topic with some low-hanging fruit. There have been concerns about using other models to label features, as this could open the door for subversion by the labeling model. Another hackathon introduced a graph-based explanation approach. I think they haven’t properly explained how they derive results for their functions. They describe functions for specific tokens, connections between tokens, and topics. I’m not quite sure if this approach can scale or if it brings us much closer to converting features into code, but I still find this general direction interesting. Verifying that features function like code would be a significant step towards explanation label integrity.

Liv Gorton

This project attempts to overcome the issue of using LLMs to aid in scaling interpretability. More details on what each function does would make understanding the work easier. It'd be interesting to see if the additional functions in the appendix improve the performance on later layers. It'd also be nice to see if these ideas generalise to other LLMs (could be done with open sourced models with SAEs on all layers like Gemma 2B).

Tom McGrath

This project aims to find alternative ways of interpreting language model features rather than asking another LLM to interpret them. The method proposed is to use the structure of the synthetic data used to train TuringLLM to generate candidate feature labels, either from uni- and bigrams or from topic data extracted from the filenames.

These interpretation functions allow the authors to label the majority of features in the earlier layers of the model, but accuracy drops substantially past layer 4 of 12. I would be interested to see examples of unlabeled features in later layers to understand whether they are more abstract features, mostly related to output tokens, or mostly uninterpretable.

The presentation of the work could be improved by describing the evaluation process and the motivation behind the choice of functions in more detail. I'm also not sure how this is intended to generalise to more complex features in more powerful models - some insight into this would be valuable.

Tom McGrath

This project aims to develop programmatic methods for interpreting the internals of the Turing LLM. These methods rely on the statistics of the synthetic dataset used to train the base model. The writeup is a bit unclear as to what exactly these methods do, but the examples and function names give a decent picture. Figure 1 is interesting: it appears that topic and uni/bi-gram statistics dominate in the earlier layers, but later layers are relatively poorly explained - what is going on here? Potentially the last couple of layers could be explained by the _next_ token, which would be interesting to see.

Cite this work

@misc {

title={

@misc {

},

author={

Daniel Davies, Ashwarya Maratha

},

date={

11/25/24

},

organization={Apart Research},

note={Research submission to the research sprint hosted by Apart.},

howpublished={https://apartresearch.com}

}

May 20, 2025

EscalAtion: Assessing Multi-Agent Risks in Military Contexts

Our project investigates the potential risks and implications of integrating multiple autonomous AI agents within national defense strategies, exploring whether these agents tend to escalate or deescalate conflict situations. Through a simulation that models real-world international relations scenarios, our preliminary results indicate that AI models exhibit a tendency to escalate conflicts, posing a significant threat to maintaining peace and preventing uncontrollable military confrontations. The experiment and subsequent evaluations are designed to reflect established international relations theories and frameworks, aiming to understand the implications of autonomous decision-making in military contexts comprehensively and unbiasedly.

Read More

Apr 28, 2025

The Early Economic Impacts of Transformative AI: A Focus on Temporal Coherence

We investigate the economic potential of Transformative AI, focusing on "temporal coherence"—the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior over time—as a critical, yet underexplored, factor in task automation. We argue that temporal coherence represents a significant bottleneck distinct from computational complexity. Using a Large Language Model to estimate the 'effective time' (a proxy for temporal coherence) needed for humans to complete remote O*NET tasks, the study reveals a non-linear link between AI coherence and automation potential. A key finding is that an 8-hour coherence capability could potentially automate around 80-84\% of the analyzed remote tasks.

Read More

Mar 31, 2025

Model Models: Simulating a Trusted Monitor

We offer initial investigations into whether the untrusted model can 'simulate' the trusted monitor: is U able to successfully guess what suspicion score T will assign in the APPS setting? We also offer a clean, modular codebase which we hope can be used to streamline future research into this question.

Read More

May 20, 2025

EscalAtion: Assessing Multi-Agent Risks in Military Contexts

Our project investigates the potential risks and implications of integrating multiple autonomous AI agents within national defense strategies, exploring whether these agents tend to escalate or deescalate conflict situations. Through a simulation that models real-world international relations scenarios, our preliminary results indicate that AI models exhibit a tendency to escalate conflicts, posing a significant threat to maintaining peace and preventing uncontrollable military confrontations. The experiment and subsequent evaluations are designed to reflect established international relations theories and frameworks, aiming to understand the implications of autonomous decision-making in military contexts comprehensively and unbiasedly.

Read More

Apr 28, 2025

The Early Economic Impacts of Transformative AI: A Focus on Temporal Coherence

We investigate the economic potential of Transformative AI, focusing on "temporal coherence"—the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior over time—as a critical, yet underexplored, factor in task automation. We argue that temporal coherence represents a significant bottleneck distinct from computational complexity. Using a Large Language Model to estimate the 'effective time' (a proxy for temporal coherence) needed for humans to complete remote O*NET tasks, the study reveals a non-linear link between AI coherence and automation potential. A key finding is that an 8-hour coherence capability could potentially automate around 80-84\% of the analyzed remote tasks.

Read More

May 20, 2025

EscalAtion: Assessing Multi-Agent Risks in Military Contexts

Our project investigates the potential risks and implications of integrating multiple autonomous AI agents within national defense strategies, exploring whether these agents tend to escalate or deescalate conflict situations. Through a simulation that models real-world international relations scenarios, our preliminary results indicate that AI models exhibit a tendency to escalate conflicts, posing a significant threat to maintaining peace and preventing uncontrollable military confrontations. The experiment and subsequent evaluations are designed to reflect established international relations theories and frameworks, aiming to understand the implications of autonomous decision-making in military contexts comprehensively and unbiasedly.

Read More

Apr 28, 2025

The Early Economic Impacts of Transformative AI: A Focus on Temporal Coherence

We investigate the economic potential of Transformative AI, focusing on "temporal coherence"—the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior over time—as a critical, yet underexplored, factor in task automation. We argue that temporal coherence represents a significant bottleneck distinct from computational complexity. Using a Large Language Model to estimate the 'effective time' (a proxy for temporal coherence) needed for humans to complete remote O*NET tasks, the study reveals a non-linear link between AI coherence and automation potential. A key finding is that an 8-hour coherence capability could potentially automate around 80-84\% of the analyzed remote tasks.

Read More

May 20, 2025

EscalAtion: Assessing Multi-Agent Risks in Military Contexts

Our project investigates the potential risks and implications of integrating multiple autonomous AI agents within national defense strategies, exploring whether these agents tend to escalate or deescalate conflict situations. Through a simulation that models real-world international relations scenarios, our preliminary results indicate that AI models exhibit a tendency to escalate conflicts, posing a significant threat to maintaining peace and preventing uncontrollable military confrontations. The experiment and subsequent evaluations are designed to reflect established international relations theories and frameworks, aiming to understand the implications of autonomous decision-making in military contexts comprehensively and unbiasedly.

Read More

Apr 28, 2025

The Early Economic Impacts of Transformative AI: A Focus on Temporal Coherence

We investigate the economic potential of Transformative AI, focusing on "temporal coherence"—the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior over time—as a critical, yet underexplored, factor in task automation. We argue that temporal coherence represents a significant bottleneck distinct from computational complexity. Using a Large Language Model to estimate the 'effective time' (a proxy for temporal coherence) needed for humans to complete remote O*NET tasks, the study reveals a non-linear link between AI coherence and automation potential. A key finding is that an 8-hour coherence capability could potentially automate around 80-84\% of the analyzed remote tasks.

Read More

This work was done during one weekend by research workshop participants and does not represent the work of Apart Research.
This work was done during one weekend by research workshop participants and does not represent the work of Apart Research.