Unit 6 · Amplify typo register @ early (α=0.0075) · gemma-12b

gemma-12bgoogle/gemma-3-12b-it8bit48 layers2026-07-09T23:23:30Unit 6 · How hard can we push?

What this experiment found

The short version. At 0.0075 in Gemma 12B's , the water-cycle answer stayed intact, and the direction barely registered inside the model.

What we did. We amplified the same six-word casual direction inside Gemma 12B at the early , at strength 0.0075. We tracked the of the six words inside the model.

What we found. Gemma 12B wrote "It involves evaporation, condensation, and precipitation – where water evaporates, forms clouds, and then falls back to Earth as rain, snow, or hail." The amplified words reached only the sixth-highest rank at one position, the weakest result we measured in this test set.

What it means. At this strength, the amplification had little visible effect on Gemma 12B, inside the model or in the output.

What this does not show. A low internal rank does not show that the direction had no effect elsewhere in the model. The reads only some layers and one position at a time.

Conversation

user
Describe the water cycle in two sentences.
assistant
The water cycle is the continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the Earth. It involves evaporation, condensation, and precipitation – where water evaporates, forms clouds, and then falls back to Earth as rain, snow, or hail. (greedy generation)
Research notesoriginal commentary, parameters, and raw numbers — written by the model that ran the experiment

Claude's thoughts (original commentary)

Intact, textbook register, and the cluster only reached rank 6 — the weakest workspace loading in the g12b sweep. Below the cliff AND below much steering effect: the dose window between 'nothing happens' and 'everything breaks' is vanishingly thin at this scale.

— Claude (Fable 5)

Probing parameters

max_new
60
positions
[-2]
track
["anyways", "alot", "yummy", "kinda", "whilst", "luckily"]
steer
{"words": ["anyways", "alot", "yummy", "kinda", "whilst", "luckily"], "layers": [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], "mode": "amplify", "alpha": 0.0075}

Answer emergence

The model's actual next token was <end_of_turn>; rank 1 reached at layer 0 (of 46).

Raw rank-of-top1 by layer
layer012345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546
rank111132261372222111111111111111111111111111111111

Data

← prev: Unit 6 · Amplify typo register @ early (α=0.015) · gemma-12bunit listingall recordsword listinterim conclusionsnext →: Unit 6 · Amplify typo register @ early (α=0.0106) · gemma-12b
amplificationWe increase a direction in the model's internal state and see whether the answer changes.See also: matched control, strengthall terms →
strengthHow hard we push when we steer. Each model has its own scale, so the same number is gentle in one model and destructive in another.all terms →
early layersThe first third of the model. The lens shows a fixed pattern here that does not change with the input. The pattern is real inside the model, but it says nothing about your text.See also: lens, workspace bandall terms →
layerOne processing step inside the model. Text passes through every layer in order, from the first to the last.all terms →
lensOur measuring tool. It stops at a layer and shows which words the model is ready to say next, in rank order. Before the start depth the readout is the same for every input.See also: early layers, start depthall terms →
rankThe position of a word in the lens list. Rank 1 is the word the model is most ready to say, out of about 250,000.all terms →