“Towards surfacing model algorithms with meta-tokens in the J-Space” by agam_bhatia

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Recorded21 Jul 2026

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TL;DR We used J-lens on Qwen3.6-27B to find “meta-tokens”: tokens that surface non-obvious computation in the model. When the model reads ambiguous text, 什么意思 ("what does this mean") fires in the J-space, and steering it away makes the model answer "a boiled egg every morning is hard to beat" with nutrition facts instead of catching the pun. On LCM problems, "gcd" fires, pointing at the product/GCD algorithm: swapping the GCD vector from 9 to 3 makes the model change its answer for the LCM of 27 and 90 from 270 to 810. Additionally, before the model hedges, 大概率 ("most likely") fires, and suppressing it makes the model commit to a single option (for e.g. "There are several logical places John could have gone" turns into "he went to the stationery store)." While meta-tokens are hard to find with J-lens’ single token constraint, future methods for multi-token J-lens open the possibility for valuable insights into the model's internal algorithms. Motivation One important goal in interpretability is to surface the variables the model uses in its computations. Another is to surface the algorithms that give rise to these variables. We can call the former variable interpretability and [...] ---Outline:(00:11) TL;DR(01:26) Motivation(02:18) What are "meta-tokens"?(03:00) Why are we writing this post?(03:22) Replication(04:11) Case studies(04:14) Interpretative meta-tokens(09:56) GCD meta-token(14:30) Hedging meta-token(16:26) Searching for more meta-tokens(20:19) Discussion(21:10) Related Work(22:21) Acknowledgements(22:28) Appendix(22:31) Replicating Key Experiments for J-Lens(24:14) Interesting Meta-tokens surfaced from our search The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 20th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ek6n7yZ5DzfarJHy/towards-surfacing-model-algorithms-with-meta-tokens-in-the-j --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

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