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Incorporating Hierarchical Semantics in Sparse Autoencoder Architectures

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arxiv 2506.01197 v1 pith:MXXHK3I7 submitted 2025-06-01 cs.CL cs.AIcs.LG

Incorporating Hierarchical Semantics in Sparse Autoencoder Architectures

classification cs.CL cs.AIcs.LG
keywords architectureconceptssemanticsparsehierarchylearnedmodelsabstract
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Sparse dictionary learning (and, in particular, sparse autoencoders) attempts to learn a set of human-understandable concepts that can explain variation on an abstract space. A basic limitation of this approach is that it neither exploits nor represents the semantic relationships between the learned concepts. In this paper, we introduce a modified SAE architecture that explicitly models a semantic hierarchy of concepts. Application of this architecture to the internal representations of large language models shows both that semantic hierarchy can be learned, and that doing so improves both reconstruction and interpretability. Additionally, the architecture leads to significant improvements in computational efficiency.

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Cited by 8 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. HH-SAE: Discovering and Steering Hierarchical Knowledge of Complex Manifolds

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    HH-SAE factorizes manifolds into nested contextual (L0), atomic (f1), and compository (f2) tiers, achieving 0.9156 cross-domain zero-shot AUC in fraud detection and +9.9% AUPRC lift in steered synthesis.

  2. Tensor Product Representation Probes Reveal Shared Structure Across Linear Directions

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    Linear probes for Othello board states factor into tensor-product structure with square and color embeddings composed by a binding matrix, from which the linear probes can be directly recovered.

  3. From Reasoning Traces to Reusable Modules: Understanding Compositional Generalization in Language Model Reasoning

    cs.LG 2026-06 conditional novelty 6.5

    SFT supplies entangled compositional traces of atomic skills and routing modules; RL identifies those modules and enables recombination on novel compositions outside the SFT support.

  4. Laguerre Geometry for Interpreting Large Language Models

    cs.AI 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    LLM concepts are Laguerre–Voronoi cells; Geometric Lens reads the exact cell of any hidden vector by isolating residual piecewise-linear flow from cross-token attention transport.

  5. Do Sparse Autoencoders Learn Meaningful Concept Hierarchies?

    cs.LG 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Sparse autoencoders provide a basis for sensible concept hierarchies on visual data but are undermined by hard and soft feature absorption.

  6. From Reasoning Traces to Reusable Modules: Understanding Compositional Generalization in Language Model Reasoning

    cs.LG 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Introduces a hierarchical latent selection model showing SFT supplies raw module materials in compound traces while RL decomposes them to identify atomic modules and enable recombination for new reasoning configurations.

  7. A Geometric View for Understanding Concept Learning and Neuron Interpretation in Sparse Autoencoders

    cs.LG 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Formalizes concept learning in sparse autoencoders as set alignment between human-defined and model-induced concepts, distinguishing detection, separation, and approximation with geometric conditions for neuron repres...

  8. Dictionary-Aligned Concept Control for Safeguarding Multimodal LLMs

    cs.LG 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    DACO curates a 15,000-concept dictionary from 400K image-caption pairs and uses it to initialize an SAE that enables granular, concept-specific steering of MLLM activations, raising safety scores on MM-SafetyBench and...