arXiv subjects

Jonathan Drechsel

Publications and source records attributed to Jonathan Drechsel.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The GRADIEND Python Package: An End-to-End System for Gradient-Based Feature Learning

We present gradiend, an open-source Python package that operationalizes the GRADIEND method for learning feature directions from factual-counterfactual MLM and CLM gradients in language models. The package provides a unified workflow for feature-related data creation, training, evaluation, visualization, persistent model rewriting via controlled weight updates, and multi-feature comparison. We demonstrate gradiend through an English pronoun running example, a semantic sentiment use case that evaluates lexical generalization to held-out target words, and a large-scale feature comparison.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2026

Understanding or Memorizing? A Case Study of German Definite Articles in Language Models

Language models perform well on grammatical agreement, but it is unclear whether this reflects rule-based generalization or memorization. We study this question for German definite singular articles, whose forms depend on gender and case. Using GRADIEND, a gradient-based interpretability method, we learn parameter update directions for gender-case specific article transitions. We find that updates learned for a specific gender-case article transition frequently affect unrelated gender-case settings, with substantial overlap among the most affected neurons across settings. These results argue against a strictly rule-based encoding of German definite articles, indicating that models at least partly rely on memorized associations rather than abstract grammatical rules.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

MAMUT: A Novel Framework for Modifying Mathematical Formulas for the Generation of Specialized Datasets for Language Model Training

Mathematical formulas are a fundamental and widely used component in various scientific fields, serving as a universal language for expressing complex concepts and relationships. While state-of-the-art transformer models excel in processing and understanding natural language, they encounter challenges with mathematical notation, which involves a complex structure and diverse representations. This study focuses on the development of specialized training datasets to enhance the encoding of mathematical content. We introduce Math Mutator (MAMUT), a framework capable of generating equivalent and falsified versions of a given mathematical formula in LaTeX notation, effectively capturing the mathematical variety in notation of the same concept. Based on MAMUT, we have generated four large mathematical datasets containing diverse notation. Experiments show that models trained on these datasets exhibit new SoTA performance on mathematical retrieval tasks. We publish our code, generated datasets, and pretrained mathematical models: https://github.com/aieng-lab/math-mutator.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

GRADIEND: Feature Learning within Neural Networks Exemplified through Biases

AI systems frequently exhibit and amplify social biases, leading to harmful consequences in critical areas. This study introduces a novel encoder-decoder approach that leverages model gradients to learn a feature neuron encoding societal bias information such as gender, race, and religion. We show that our method can not only identify which weights of a model need to be changed to modify a feature, but even demonstrate that this can be used to rewrite models to debias them while maintaining other capabilities. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach across various model architectures and highlight its potential for broader applications.

cs.LG↗