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Equation 29 · Probing, Sparse Autoencoders, Patching, and Steering: The Main Interpretability Methods, Compared

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ℓ\ell

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where P and N index matched positive and negative examples of the target behaviour, hℓh_\ell is the residual-stream activation at layer ℓ\ell , and α\alpha is a coefficient the operator sets by hand. Nothing in this construction requires understanding why the network represents the concept along this direction, only that adding it produces the intended behavioural shift.

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