# Representational Difference Explanations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.23917 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23917/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 70 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- [Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01365/) (2017)
- [Similarity of Neural Network Representations Revisited](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00414/) (2019)
- [Sparse Autoencoders Find Highly Interpretable Features in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08600/) (2023)
- [Interpretability Beyond Feature Attribution: Quantitative Testing with Concept Activation Vectors (TCAV)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11279/) (2017)
- [Do Vision Transformers See Like Convolutional Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08810/) (2021)
- [Scaling and evaluating sparse autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04093/) (2024)
- [The Platonic Representation Hypothesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07987/) (2024)
- [What is being transferred in transfer learning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11687/) (2020)
- [Jumping Ahead: Improving Reconstruction Fidelity with JumpReLU Sparse Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14435/) (2024)
- [Post-hoc Concept Bottleneck Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15480/) (2022)
- [Do Wide and Deep Networks Learn the Same Things? Uncovering How Neural Network Representations Vary with Width and Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.15327/) (2020)
- [Convergent Learning: Do different neural networks learn the same representations?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07543/) (2015)
- [k-Sparse Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5663/) (2013)
- [CRAFT: Concept Recursive Activation FacTorization for Explainability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10154/) (2022)
- [From Attribution Maps to Human-Understandable Explanations through Concept Relevance Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.03208/) (2022)
- [Invertible Concept-based Explanations for CNN Models with Non-negative Concept Activation Vectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.15417/) (2020)
- [Revealing the Dark Secrets of Masked Image Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13543/) (2022)
- [A Holistic Approach to Unifying Automatic Concept Extraction and Concept Importance Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07304/) (2023)
- [What I Cannot Predict, I Do Not Understand: A Human-Centered Evaluation Framework for Explainability Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04417/) (2021)
- [Archetypal SAE: Adaptive and Stable Dictionary Learning for Concept Extraction in Large Vision Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12892/) (2025)
- [Universal Sparse Autoencoders: Interpretable Cross-Model Concept Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03714/) (2025)
- [Mechanistic understanding and validation of large AI models with SemanticLens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05398/) (2025)
- [Interpretable and Testable Vision Features via Sparse Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06755/) (2025)
- [Efficient Diversity-Driven Ensemble for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13316/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a method for discovering and visualizing the differences between two learned representations, enabling more direct and interpretable model comparisons. We validate our method, which we call Representational Differences Explanations (RDX), by using it to compare models with known conceptual differences and demonstrate that it recovers meaningful distinctions where existing explainable AI (XAI) techniques fail. Applied to state-of-the-art models on challenging subsets of the ImageNet and iNaturalist datasets, RDX reveals both insightful representational differences and subtle patterns in the data. Although comparison is a cornerstone of scientific analysis, current tools in machine learning, namely post hoc XAI methods, struggle to support model comparison effectively. Our work addresses this gap by introducing an effective and explainable tool for contrasting model representations.