NeurIPS paper: AI protein folding models converge on a shared two-stage mechanism

rishabh16_ · x · 2026-09-29

A Northeastern-led NeurIPS 2026 paper uses mechanistic interpretability on ESMFold, OpenFold, and Boltz-1, finding a shared two-stage computation: early blocks initialize pairwise biochemical signals like charge, late blocks build spatial distance/contact features. Steering these features induces predictable structural changes, and pairwise states are linearly interchangeable across models, suggesting convergent representational organization.

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