SAE debate continues: still a good map of representation space, but metamodels win for safety readouts
thebasepoint · x · 2026-10-27
Weighing in on the SAE relevance debate, thebasepoint agrees with livgorton: residual-stream SAEs are still a very good way to map a model's representation space. But if you want a safety-relevant readout of the model's "thoughts", metamodel outputs are more precise and easier to consume.
Related event: Researchers Debate Whether SAEs Are Becoming Obsolete(4 posts)→
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