Feature Interactions Reveal Linguistic Structure in Language Models
Jaap Jumelet Willem Zuidema
We study feature interactions in the context of feature attribution methods
for post-hoc interpretability. In interpretability research, getting to grips
with feature interactions is increasingly recognised as an important challenge,
because interacting features are key to the success of neural networks. Feature
interactions allow a model to build up hierarchical representations for its
input, and might provide an ideal starting point for the investigation into
linguistic structure in language models. However, uncovering the exact role
that these interactions play is also difficult, and a diverse range of
interaction attribution methods has been proposed. In this paper, we focus on
the question which of these methods most faithfully reflects the inner workings
of the target models. We work out a grey box methodology, in which we train
models to perfection on a formal language classification task, using PCFGs. We
show that under specific configurations, some methods are indeed able to
uncover the grammatical rules acquired by a model. Based on these findings we
extend our evaluation to a case study on language models, providing novel
insights into the linguistic structure that these models have acquired.