Overview
A wheel feature alone does not classify a car. Neither does a window feature. A model combines several earlier features, suppresses conflicting evidence, and creates a later car representation. That composition is a circuit.
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Circuit
A circuit is the subset of a model's features, weights, and nonlinearities that implements a particular computation from earlier representations to later ones.
Build a Curve-Detection Circuit
Change the early edge detectors and step through the computation. Excitatory weights add compatible evidence; an inhibitory weight subtracts an opposing orientation.
1. Input evidence
left edge
0.85
right edge
0.75
opposing
0.20
curve = 0.65(0.85) + 0.65(0.75) - 0.70(0.20)
curve
0.90
circle client
0.97
A circuit explanation names the features, the signed connections between them, and the computation those connections implement.