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arxiv: 2605.20337 · v1 · pith:5TTWNIS5new · submitted 2026-05-19 · 💻 cs.CV

Capability neq Interpretability: Human Interpretability of Vision Foundation Models

Julien Colin , Lore Goetschalckx , Nuria Oliver , Thomas Serre This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-21 07:32 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.CV
keywords vision transformershuman interpretabilitypsychophysicsfoundation modelssparse autoencodersfeature localizationmodel evaluation
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The pith

Foundation models produce less human-interpretable features than supervised vision transformers.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper introduces a framework to measure human interpretability of vision model features through two psychophysics protocols. One tests whether people can predict where a recovered feature will activate on a new image. The other tests whether people can accurately describe what the feature represents. Features come from sparse autoencoders and scores are normalized against chance to allow direct comparison across models. When applied to supervised ViTs and four foundation models, the data from over 13,000 valid responses show foundation models rank lower on interpretability. This shortfall does not track differences in task performance, but instead tracks how focal the activations are and how well they match broad human categories.

Core claim

Foundation models are consistently less interpretable than their supervised counterparts, and the gap is not a capability tradeoff: interpretability does not correlate with downstream task performance on any benchmark we examine. What does correlate is the locality of a feature's activations and coarse-grained semantic alignment with humans -- models with focal activations and representations that reflect the world's broad categorical structure produce more interpretable features, whereas fine-grained perceptual alignment does not. The two protocols yield strongly correlated rankings and share the same predictors, establishing interpretability as an independent, measurable dimension of model

What carries the argument

Two psychophysics protocols (localizability and nameability) applied to sparse autoencoder features, combined with chance-anchored scoring to rank models on one scale.

Load-bearing premise

The localizability and nameability protocols together provide a valid and generalizable measure of human interpretability for the recovered features.

What would settle it

Demonstrating a positive correlation between the measured interpretability scores and performance on a new downstream benchmark not tested in the study would undermine the claim that interpretability is independent of capability.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2605.20337 by Julien Colin, Lore Goetschalckx, Nuria Oliver, Thomas Serre.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: Models trained under different objectives learn different internal representations and, [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p002_1.png] view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Interpretability is uncorrelated with downstream task performance. Each panel plots an interpretability score against a capability benchmark across the six models. Top row: localizability; bottom row: nameability. Columns: ImageNet-1k top-1 accuracy, ADE20K semantic segmenta￾tion, and perceptual grouping. Spearman ρ and p-values are shown in each panel. Correlations are non-significant for both interpretab… view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Figure 3: Locality and coarse-grained semantic alignment track interpretability. Each panel plots an interpretability score against a representational property across the six models. Top row: localizability; bottom row: nameability. Columns: locality of the representation (mean Hoyer sparsity over feature heatmaps), and coarse-grained alignment with human similarity judgments on THINGS [43] and Levels [39] (odd-one-… view at source ↗
read the original abstract

How interpretable are the features of leading vision models? The question is increasingly pressing as these models move from research benchmarks into high-stakes deployments, yet existing methods cannot answer it reliably. We close this gap with a framework for measuring and comparing the human interpretability of vision models, built around two complementary psychophysics protocols: (1) localizability -- can an observer predict where a feature fires on a novel image? -- and (2) nameability -- can an observer accurately describe what the feature represents? Features are recovered via sparse autoencoders, and a chance-anchored scoring function places every model on a common scale. Applying the framework to six vision transformers -- two supervised ViTs and four foundation models (DINOv2, DINOv3, CLIP, SigLIP) -- we collected more than $15{,}000$ behavioral responses, analyzing the $13{,}400$ responses from the $377$ participants who passed our pre-specified quality checks. Foundation models are consistently *less* interpretable than their supervised counterparts, and the gap is not a capability tradeoff: interpretability does not correlate with downstream task performance on any benchmark we examine. What does correlate is the locality of a feature's activations and coarse-grained semantic alignment with humans -- models with focal activations and representations that reflect the world's broad categorical structure produce more interpretable features, whereas fine-grained perceptual alignment does not. The two protocols yield strongly correlated rankings and share the same predictors, establishing interpretability as an independent, measurable dimension of representation quality -- and, surprisingly, one on which every foundation model we tested falls below the supervised baselines that came before. Capability alone cannot close that gap; locality and coarse-grained alignment can.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

3 major / 2 minor

Summary. The manuscript introduces a framework to measure human interpretability of features in vision transformers using sparse autoencoders combined with two psychophysics protocols: localizability (predicting where a feature activates on novel images) and nameability (describing the feature). Based on 13,400 valid responses from 377 participants who passed pre-specified quality checks, it reports that foundation models (DINOv2, DINOv3, CLIP, SigLIP) are consistently less interpretable than supervised ViTs, that this gap does not reflect a capability tradeoff (no correlation with downstream benchmarks), and that interpretability instead correlates with activation locality and coarse-grained semantic alignment with humans.

Significance. If the protocols prove robust to image selection and participant criteria, the work would establish interpretability as a measurable, independent dimension of representation quality separate from capability. The large behavioral dataset provides solid empirical grounding for the model-type comparisons and identifies actionable predictors (locality, coarse alignment). This has direct relevance for high-stakes vision deployments where human-understandable features matter.

major comments (3)
  1. [Methods (psychophysics protocols and participant screening)] The central claim that foundation models are less interpretable than supervised ViTs, and that the gap is not a capability tradeoff, depends on the psychophysics protocols capturing intrinsic feature properties rather than artifacts. The image selection process and the quality filters that retained 377 participants (from the initial pool yielding 15,000 responses) could systematically favor focal activations more common in supervised models; without a sensitivity analysis varying image distributions or screening criteria, the observed gap and lack of benchmark correlation may be setup-dependent.
  2. [Results (correlation with downstream performance)] The assertion that interpretability does not correlate with downstream task performance is load-bearing for the no-tradeoff conclusion. The manuscript should report the exact benchmarks examined, the correlation coefficients (with confidence intervals), and any multiple-comparison corrections, as the null result could be sensitive to benchmark choice or statistical power.
  3. [Results (protocol agreement)] The statement that the two protocols yield strongly correlated rankings and share the same predictors underpins the claim that interpretability is a coherent dimension. The specific Pearson or Spearman correlation value, sample size, and p-value for the protocol agreement should be provided explicitly.
minor comments (2)
  1. [Abstract] The abstract states 'more than 15,000 behavioral responses' but analyzes 13,400 from 377 participants; state the exact initial participant count and response total in the main text for transparency.
  2. [Throughout] Ensure consistent terminology when referring to the four foundation models versus the two supervised ViTs across figures and tables.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

3 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their detailed and constructive review of our manuscript. We address each major comment below and commit to revisions that strengthen the presentation of our methods and results without altering the core findings.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [Methods (psychophysics protocols and participant screening)] The central claim that foundation models are less interpretable than supervised ViTs, and that the gap is not a capability tradeoff, depends on the psychophysics protocols capturing intrinsic feature properties rather than artifacts. The image selection process and the quality filters that retained 377 participants (from the initial pool yielding 15,000 responses) could systematically favor focal activations more common in supervised models; without a sensitivity analysis varying image distributions or screening criteria, the observed gap and lack of benchmark correlation may be setup-dependent.

    Authors: We agree that robustness to these design choices is important to establish. In the revised manuscript we will add a dedicated sensitivity analysis section that re-runs the key comparisons under alternative image sampling distributions and under relaxed or stricter participant quality thresholds. This will directly test whether the interpretability gap and its predictors remain stable. revision: yes

  2. Referee: [Results (correlation with downstream performance)] The assertion that interpretability does not correlate with downstream task performance is load-bearing for the no-tradeoff conclusion. The manuscript should report the exact benchmarks examined, the correlation coefficients (with confidence intervals), and any multiple-comparison corrections, as the null result could be sensitive to benchmark choice or statistical power.

    Authors: We will expand the relevant results section to list every benchmark examined, report the Pearson correlation coefficients together with 95% confidence intervals, and state the multiple-comparison correction applied. These additions will make the statistical basis for the null result fully transparent. revision: yes

  3. Referee: [Results (protocol agreement)] The statement that the two protocols yield strongly correlated rankings and share the same predictors underpins the claim that interpretability is a coherent dimension. The specific Pearson or Spearman correlation value, sample size, and p-value for the protocol agreement should be provided explicitly.

    Authors: We will insert the requested quantitative details into the results section, reporting the Spearman rank correlation between the two protocol scores, the number of features on which it is computed, and the associated p-value. This will give explicit support to the claim that the protocols measure a coherent dimension. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No significant circularity: empirical psychophysics measurements are self-contained

full rationale

The paper derives its claims from direct human behavioral data collected via two psychophysics protocols (localizability and nameability) applied to features recovered by sparse autoencoders from six vision transformers. Over 15,000 responses were gathered and filtered to 13,400 from 377 participants using pre-specified quality checks, with rankings and correlations computed from these participant judgments rather than from any fitted parameters, self-definitions, or load-bearing self-citations. The reported gap in interpretability between foundation models and supervised ViTs, along with the lack of correlation to downstream benchmarks and the role of locality and coarse-grained alignment, emerges from the external human responses and does not reduce to the inputs by construction. This is a standard empirical study whose central results are falsifiable against new participant cohorts or image sets and therefore self-contained against external benchmarks.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The central claim rests on the assumption that sparse autoencoders recover human-meaningful features and that the chosen psychophysics tasks validly capture interpretability; no new physical entities or ad-hoc constants are introduced.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Human observers can reliably perform localization and naming tasks on model features when quality controls are applied.
    Invoked to justify the behavioral data as a measure of interpretability.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5852 in / 1227 out tokens · 27304 ms · 2026-05-21T07:32:55.592693+00:00 · methodology

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Reference graph

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