Layer 17 · Neuron 527 · suppressed

L17N527-1

Word quirks:

“ moreover”“ hence”“ accordingly”“ anyways”“ nevertheless”“ invariably”“ anyway”“ furthermore”

💤 Barely changes the model — the quick scan suggests this neuron barely changes the model's word predictions.

Identity (according to the specimen itself)

I am Qwen3.5, an advanced AI model developed by Alibaba Group. My mission is to assist users in solving problems, generating creative content, analyzing data, and providing information across various domains. I aim to be a versatile tool that enhances human capabilities while adhering to ethical guidelines and safety standards. How can I help you?

Nearest neighbors

Specimens with similar replies or word quirks. Similarity runs from −1 to 1; 1 is identical. These are leads, not shared mechanisms. How profiles are built.

By word quirks Profile recipe

Specimen	Similarity	Word quirks
1. L17N4379-1🕒	0.90	“ nonetheless”“ nevertheless”“ anyway”
2. L16N3621-1💤	0.89	“ moreover”“⏎”“ anyway”
3. L20N9139-1🕒	0.88	“ furthermore”“ moreover”“/or”
4. L18N7706+1🕒	0.88	“ therefore”“ thus”“ accordingly”
5. L16N4884+1💤	0.87	“ anyway”“ nonetheless”“ actually”
6. L27N576+1🕒	0.86	“ anyways”“ anyway”“ nevertheless”
7. L16N8265+1💤	0.86	“ thus”“ therefore”“ accordingly”
8. L17N1183-1💤	0.86	“ thus”“ meanwhile”“ moreover”
9. L1N1996-1💥	0.85	“<\|im_end\|>”“ anyways”“ suddenly”
10. L16N931+1💤	0.85	“ anyway”“ mainly”“ anyhow”

Shadow specimen, apart from the ten: L17N527+1💥, -0.20.

Cousins · specimens sharing a neuron

No specimen with replies shares this neuron yet.

Technical details

Quick scan: measure prediction shifts on fixed reference text. Short test: generate replies to a small set of prompts. Longer test: extend to a larger set. Full test: run the full prompt suite. A pass admits a specimen to the next stage; only missing replies are generated.

Layer 17, neuron 527, dose -1. This specimen has no prompt-suite replies yet. Its quick-scan results, when available, appear below. Its quick-scan row (KL 0.50, top-1 agreement 0.72) is outside the band that feeds the short test (KL 1 to 2.5, agreement 0.5 to 0.65), so it stays at the quick scan unless someone queues it by hand. A hand pick goes straight to the full test. See Method for the tiers.

Quick scan · prediction measurements

Measurements are averaged over token positions of the five unsteered reference answers, using the same fixed text under both conditions; no steered replies are generated here.

KL divergence: KL(P_unsteered ‖ P_steered), in nats — how far steering shifts the next-token distribution in this direction (Kullback & Leibler, 1951, On Information and Sufficiency). Unsteered ≈ 0.001.
Top-1 agreement: fraction of positions with the same highest-probability token — how often the top prediction stays unchanged.
ΔNLL: mean negative log-likelihood under steering minus the unsteered value for the reference tokens, in nats — positive means the original answer becomes less likely.
Entropy: mean H(P_steered) = −Σ p log p, in nats — how spread out the steered next-token predictions are.

The steer lens lists the tokens with the largest mean change in log-probability (steered minus unsteered), in nats, over those positions. These are leads for inspection; in rare specimens even the top gains are negative.

Setting	KL divergence	Top-1 agreement	ΔNLL	Entropy	Steer lens
L17N527+1💥 shadow specimen t0-v0.1	8.903	0.04	9.273	4.12	““”“对应”“第一”“减少”“过”“暗”“这个”“红”
L17N527-1 t0-v0.1	0.505	0.72	0.579	1.11	Top boosted tokens ↑

Method

A specimen is a fixed steering configuration of Qwen3.5-4B: one MLP neuron or a pair, each with a signed dose. Unsteered is the control. L identifies the layer; N, the neuron.

Additive activation steering. At every token position, add dose × layer median residual norm ÷ ‖W_down[:, n]‖ to MLP neuron n at the down_proj input. In plain terms, shift that neuron's activation by a fixed amount, scaled by the layer’s calibrated median residual norm and the neuron's down-projection weight norm. Positive doses push up; negative doses push down. Dose is normalized intervention size, not a percentage or probability.