[Linkpost] “[Paper] Stochastic Parameter Decomposition” by Lee Sharkey, Lucius Bushnaq, Dan Braun
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This is a link post. ** Abstract**

A key step in reverse engineering neural networks is to decompose them into simpler parts that can be studied in relative isolation.

Linear parameter decomposition— a framework that has been proposed to resolve several issues with current decomposition methods—decomposes neural network parameters into a sum of sparsely used vectors in parameter space.

However, the current main method in this framework, Attribution-based Parameter Decomposition (APD), is impractical on account of its computational cost and sensitivity to hyperparameters.

In this work, we introduce Stochastic Parameter Decomposition (SPD), a method that is more scalable and robust to hyperparameters than APD, which we demonstrate by decomposing models that are slightly larger and more complex than was possible to decompose with APD.

We also show that SPD avoids other issues, such as shrinkage of the learned parameters, and better identifies ground truth mechanisms in toy [...]

First published: June 27th, 2025

Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yjrpmCmqurDmbMztW/paper-stochastic-parameter-decomposition)

Linkpost URL:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20790)

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