Interpretability is "false progress" if it cannot improve intervention capabilities
EEnouen · x · 2026-08-26
The author suggests it is easy to convince oneself of a deep understanding of model internals. However, if an interpretability method cannot infer, intervene, or steer better than simple baselines, it is likely "false progress". Yoav Goldberg counters that if the goal is understanding, then helpful insights are real progress; for downstream tasks, direct attack is more effective.
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