Toy Models of Superposition: Feature Compression in Neural Networks

Open your IDE. You observe a single hidden-layer neuron. It responds to both “Python” and “error handling.” This is not a bug; it is feature-level compression. Anthropic’s Toy Models research reveals how feature sparsity drives “superposition,” explaining how models store more concepts under capacity constraints.

Chinchilla: Model/Data Ratios on a Budget

When compute is limited, should you buy a bigger model or feed it more data? Chinchilla gave a counterintuitive answer in 2022: at a fixed training budget, a 70B model trained on 1.4T tokens outperformed a 280B model trained on 300B tokens, using the same compute. That points to an approximate 1:20 parameter-to-token ratio in that setup. If you’re planning an LLM training run, this paper offers a practical way to think about model size, data volume, and where your next dollar creates more learning.