@inproceedings{weng-etal-2026-safe,
title = "Safe-{SAIL}: Towards a Fine-grained Safety Landscape of Large Language Models via Sparse Autoencoder Interpretation Framework",
author = "Weng, Jiaqi and
Zheng, Han and
Zhang, Hanyu and
Zhou, Ej and
He, Qinqin and
Tao, Jialing and
Xue, Hui and
Chu, Zhixuan and
Wang, Xiting",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.944/",
pages = "18916--18935",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) enable interpretability research by decomposing entangled model activations into monosemantic features. However, under what circumstances SAEs derive most fine-grained latent features for safety{---}a low-frequency concept domain{---}remains unexplored. Two key challenges exist: identifying SAEs with the greatest potential for generating safety domain-specific features, and the prohibitively high cost of detailed feature explanation. In this paper, we propose **Safe-SAIL**, a unified framework for interpreting SAE features in safety-critical domains to advance mechanistic understanding of large language models. Safe-SAIL introduces a pre-explanation evaluation metric to efficiently identify SAEs with strong safety domain-specific interpretability, and reduces interpretation cost by 55{\%} through a segment-level simulation strategy. Building on Safe-SAIL, we train a comprehensive suite of SAEs with human-readable explanations and systematic evaluations for 1,758 safety-related features spanning four domains: pornography, politics, violence, and terror. Using this resource, we conduct empirical analyses and provide insights on the effectiveness of Safe-SAIL for risk feature identification and how safety-critical entities and concepts are encoded across model layers. All models, explanations, and tools are publicly released in an open-source toolkit at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/Safe-SAIL/."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="weng-etal-2026-safe">
<titleInfo>
<title>Safe-SAIL: Towards a Fine-grained Safety Landscape of Large Language Models via Sparse Autoencoder Interpretation Framework</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiaqi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Weng</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Han</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zheng</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hanyu</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ej</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhou</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Qinqin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">He</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jialing</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Tao</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hui</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Xue</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zhixuan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Chu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xiting</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-07</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Maria</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Liakata</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Viviane</namePart>
<namePart type="given">P</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Moreira</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiajun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">David</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Jurgens</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">San Diego, California, United States</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-395-1</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) enable interpretability research by decomposing entangled model activations into monosemantic features. However, under what circumstances SAEs derive most fine-grained latent features for safety—a low-frequency concept domain—remains unexplored. Two key challenges exist: identifying SAEs with the greatest potential for generating safety domain-specific features, and the prohibitively high cost of detailed feature explanation. In this paper, we propose **Safe-SAIL**, a unified framework for interpreting SAE features in safety-critical domains to advance mechanistic understanding of large language models. Safe-SAIL introduces a pre-explanation evaluation metric to efficiently identify SAEs with strong safety domain-specific interpretability, and reduces interpretation cost by 55% through a segment-level simulation strategy. Building on Safe-SAIL, we train a comprehensive suite of SAEs with human-readable explanations and systematic evaluations for 1,758 safety-related features spanning four domains: pornography, politics, violence, and terror. Using this resource, we conduct empirical analyses and provide insights on the effectiveness of Safe-SAIL for risk feature identification and how safety-critical entities and concepts are encoded across model layers. All models, explanations, and tools are publicly released in an open-source toolkit at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/Safe-SAIL/.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">weng-etal-2026-safe</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.944/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-07</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>18916</start>
<end>18935</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Safe-SAIL: Towards a Fine-grained Safety Landscape of Large Language Models via Sparse Autoencoder Interpretation Framework
%A Weng, Jiaqi
%A Zheng, Han
%A Zhang, Hanyu
%A Zhou, Ej
%A He, Qinqin
%A Tao, Jialing
%A Xue, Hui
%A Chu, Zhixuan
%A Wang, Xiting
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F weng-etal-2026-safe
%X Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) enable interpretability research by decomposing entangled model activations into monosemantic features. However, under what circumstances SAEs derive most fine-grained latent features for safety—a low-frequency concept domain—remains unexplored. Two key challenges exist: identifying SAEs with the greatest potential for generating safety domain-specific features, and the prohibitively high cost of detailed feature explanation. In this paper, we propose **Safe-SAIL**, a unified framework for interpreting SAE features in safety-critical domains to advance mechanistic understanding of large language models. Safe-SAIL introduces a pre-explanation evaluation metric to efficiently identify SAEs with strong safety domain-specific interpretability, and reduces interpretation cost by 55% through a segment-level simulation strategy. Building on Safe-SAIL, we train a comprehensive suite of SAEs with human-readable explanations and systematic evaluations for 1,758 safety-related features spanning four domains: pornography, politics, violence, and terror. Using this resource, we conduct empirical analyses and provide insights on the effectiveness of Safe-SAIL for risk feature identification and how safety-critical entities and concepts are encoded across model layers. All models, explanations, and tools are publicly released in an open-source toolkit at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/Safe-SAIL/.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.944/
%P 18916-18935
Markdown (Informal)
[Safe-SAIL: Towards a Fine-grained Safety Landscape of Large Language Models via Sparse Autoencoder Interpretation Framework](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.944/) (Weng et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Jiaqi Weng, Han Zheng, Hanyu Zhang, Ej Zhou, Qinqin He, Jialing Tao, Hui Xue, Zhixuan Chu, and Xiting Wang. 2026. Safe-SAIL: Towards a Fine-grained Safety Landscape of Large Language Models via Sparse Autoencoder Interpretation Framework. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026, pages 18916–18935, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.