Researchers Clarify Astra Weight Editing: Known Interpretability Tech, Not RSI
Researchers clarified that Astra's editing of Qwen3.5-0.8B weights was not RSI but an application of published interpretability techniques. Neel Nanda called it old-school mechanistic interpretability, and 1a3orn noted the edit only worked because Qwen3.5 had a looping defect, failing on Gemma 270m.
2026-11-03 ~ 2026-11-03 · 3 related posts
- Episode 1: MIT: LLM Edits 0.016% of Weights to Boost Small Model Math Sixfold(2026-11-03, 39 posts)
- Episode 2: Researchers Clarify Astra Weight Editing: Known Interpretability Tech, Not RSI(2026-11-03, 3 posts)
- Episode 3: GPT-6 'Weight Editing' Claim Disputed as Steering Vector Trial-and-Error(2026-11-03, 2 posts)
- Follow-up: Astra's weight edits only worked on Qwen's visible flaw, not on Gemma 270m — teortaxesTex · 2026-11-03
- Neel Nanda: GPT-6 Astra's weight editing is old-school mech interp, not spooky — JacquesThibs · 2026-11-03
- Astra's Qwen weight edit was a published interpretability technique, not RSI — markjeffrey · 2026-11-03