Contrastive-Difference CKA Reveals Concept-Specific Structural Alignment Across Language Model Architectures
Do different LLM architectures encode high-level concepts in structurally compatible ways? We systematically characterize a geometric-functional universality dissociation: across multiple concept domains and architectural families, moderate geometric convergence coexists with near-perfect functional transfer. Using contrastive-difference CKA (CKA_Delta), a training-free diagnostic that computes kernel alignment on per-sample contrastive differences, we isolate concept-specific convergence from generic similarity -- achieving significant discrimination where standard CKA cannot. The dissociation replicates across all six concept domains we test (five with p <= 0.017 geometric discriminatio...
| Authors | Xueping Gao |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 15 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 15 June 2026 |
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