aiqbench analysis
This research investigates whether Diffusion Language Models internally encode a latent representation of denoising progress despite lacking explicit timestep conditioning. The authors demonstrate that this signal is decodable from internal activations and can be manipulated to systematically modulate model confidence and entropy, offering new insights into the interpretability of diffusion-based architectures.
Subliminal Clocks: Latent Time Modelling in Diffusion Language Models
arXiv:2607.01774v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Diffusion Language Models (DLMs) have recently emerged as a promising alternative to autoregressive models. Unlike standard diffusion-based approaches, DLMs are not explicitly conditioned on a timestep, raising a natural question: do these models internally represent denoising progress, and how is such information used downstream? In this work, we show that DLMs do in fact encode a latent representation related to the diffusion timestep within their residual streams. We find that this signal can be reliably extracted using probes across layers, indicating that denoising progress is decodable from internal activations. We further demonstrate that steering the model along a low-dimensional subspace associated with the inferred timestep allows us to systematically modulate its notion of denoising progress, leading to predictable changes in model confidence and entropy. Finally, we analyse the geometry of the identified representation, showing that it exhibits structured and interpretable properties in activation space, and shedding light on how such a signal is processed by these models.
Abstract:Diffusion Language Models (DLMs) have recently emerged as a promising alternative to autoregressive models. Unlike standard diffusion-based approaches, DLMs are not explicitly conditioned on a timestep, raising a natural question: do these models internally represent denoising progress, and how is such information used downstream? In this work, we show that DLMs do in fact encode a latent representation related to the diffusion timestep within their residual streams. We find that this signal can be reliably extracted using probes across layers, indicating that denoising progress is decodable from internal activations. We further demonstrate that steering the model along a low-dimensional subspace associated with the inferred timestep allows us to systematically modulate its notion of denoising progress, leading to predictable changes in model confidence and entropy. Finally, we analyse the geometry of the identified representation, showing that it exhibits structured and interpretable properties in activation space, and shedding light on how such a signal is processed by these models.
Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL)
arXiv:2607.01774 [cs.AI]
(or arXiv:2607.01774v2 [cs.AI] for this version)
Full text under the publisher's open licence · 172 words
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