Circuit tracing gives hypotheses before certainty
Modern interpretability is moving from screenshots of attention to causal stories about features and pathways. That is progress, but it also creates a new trap: the story can look more complete than the evidence.
A good field demo should label each layer: observed output, suspected feature, traced path, causal test, and external receipt. Readers should be able to say which part is a clue and which part actually changed the model's behavior.
This habit prevents interpretability theater. The beautiful graph earns trust only when it survives a behavioral check.
Aha moment
A circuit trace becomes persuasive when changing the suspected component changes the behavior you care about.
Try this
Write one circuit-tracing claim as a hypothesis, then name the intervention or output check that would test it.
Watch for
- Beautiful attribution paths with no behavioral intervention
- Feature labels that sound more precise than the evidence
- Ignoring alternative circuits that could explain the same output