In plain words: Trained networks to add numbers on a clock-like circle, then inspected the math each one used. Tiny changes in settings or starting weights made them invent different solving tricks, including a new one, so the same task does not reliably produce the known algorithm.
Abstract · The Clock and the Pizza: Two Stories in Mechanistic Explanation of Neural Networks
Do neural networks, trained on well-understood algorithmic tasks, reliably rediscover known algorithms for solving those tasks? Several recent studies, on tasks ranging from group arithmetic to in-context linear regression, have suggested that the answer is yes. Using modular addition as a prototypical problem, we show that algorithm discovery in neural networks is sometimes more complex. Small changes to model hyperparameters and initializations can induce the discovery of qualitatively different algorithms from a fixed training set, and even parallel implementations of multiple such algorithms. Some networks trained to perform modular addition implement a familiar Clock algorithm; others implement a previously undescribed, less intuitive, but comprehensible procedure which we term the Pizza algorithm, or a variety of even more complex procedures. Our results show that even simple learning problems can admit a surprising diversity of solutions, motivating the development of new tools for characterizing the behavior of neural networks across their algorithmic phase space.
Ziqian Zhong, Ziming Liu, Max Tegmark, Jacob Andreas
arXiv:2306.17844 · cs.LG · submitted Jun 30, 2023 · updated Nov 21, 2023
abstract · pdf · html · Accepted by NeurIPS 2023