Equation 1 · Part 3 · The Hardest Unsolved Problems in Mechanistic Interpretability
superscript
superscript
What this part means
A raised number can be a power. When it is a label or bound, it selects a case or the upper limit of a sum; the formula’s structure distinguishes these uses.
Its job in the formula
A raised mark can be a power or an index. Its position and the surrounding notation determine which.
Full expression→superscript→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
Leask, Nanda and colleagues then tested the assumption directly with two new techniques, and the result undercuts the idea that there is a “right” dictionary size waiting to be found by scaling further. Stitching the dictionaries of differently sized sparse autoencoders together, they show that larger dictionaries recover latents genuinely missing from smaller ones — the smaller dictionary is incomplete. Training a second, “meta” sparse autoencoder on the decoder directions of a first one, they show that what looks like a single, atomic feature in a large dictionary is itself well approximated by a sparse combination of directions from a smaller one — a reported example decomposes an…
Learn the underlying idea
An exponent tells how a base is used in multiplication. In x³, x is the base and 3 is the exponent: x³ = x × x × x.
Open the illustrated exponents: repeated multiplication and powers guide →
Sources cited in the article section
- [2] A is for Absorption: Studying Feature Splitting and Absorption in Sparse Autoencoders ↗
- [3] Sparse Autoencoders Do Not Find Canonical Units of Analysis ↗
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.