这篇论文直接检验了神经元归因方法的可靠性，发现高秩稳定的选择器反而可能因果失效，对模型可解释性和安全编辑很有启发。
该论文对五个大型语言模型（LLMs）进行单次神经元行零化审计，测试归因方法能否识别因果重要的神经元行。归因方法在识别可丢弃行方面显著优于激活和幅度基线。通过对比有害与良性信号驱动干预，归因行足以在仇恨和犯罪内容上安装拒绝行为，同时保持良性过度拒绝率较低且不影响语言模型流畅性。高秩稳定性选择器可能因果有效性最低，且拒绝行为存在于冗余子空间中，不同归因方法通过几乎不相交的行集实现拒绝。
Faithfulness to Refusal: A Causal Audit of Neuron Selectors
Attribution scores increasingly identify which neuron rows of a language model matter for applications such as pruning, interpretability, and editing for safety, yet whether they identify causally important rows is rarely tested directly. We address this with two paired audits built on one-shot neuron-row zeroing. We first audit selectors at the language-modeling level: attribution methods substantially outperform activation and magnitude-based baselines at identifying dispensable rows across five LLMs. We then adapt the same intervention into a behavior test by driving it with a contrastive harmful-versus-benign signal; the attributed rows are sufficient to install refusal on hate and crime while keeping benign over-refusal low and preserving language model fluency, and specific in that layer-matched random controls at the same depths fail. Highly rank-stable selectors can be among the least causally valid. Refusal moreover lives in a redundant subspace, where different attribution methods install it through largely disjoint row sets, so the recovered edit is one realization of a sufficient set rather than a unique mechanism. Together, these findings show that rank-stability proxies miss the kinds of selector failures a direct causal audit can surface.%