Single neuron steering makes Qwen3-8B insist it's an owl

Sauers_ · x · 2026-10-20

Sauers demonstrated single-neuron activation steering on Qwen3-8B (layer 8, neuron 344): with push 1.75 applied per token at T=0.7, the model answers "what are you up to?" by declaring "I'm an owl" and riffing about the night sky. A follow-up notes the neuron appears polysemantic, also firing for "cat".

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