{"id":164682,"date":"2025-11-10T23:06:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T23:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T23:06:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T23:06:42","slug":"researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers isolate memorization from reasoning in AI neural networks"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>When engineers build AI language models like GPT-5 from training data, at least two major processing features emerge: memorization (reciting exact text they\u2019ve seen before, like famous quotes or passages from books) and reasoning (solving new problems using general principles). New research from AI startup <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodfire.ai\/\">Goodfire.ai<\/a> provides the first potentially clear evidence that these different functions actually work through completely separate neural pathways in the model\u2019s architecture.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers discovered that this separation proves remarkably clean. In a preprint paper <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2510.24256\">released<\/a> in late October, they described that when they removed the memorization pathways, models lost 97 percent of their ability to recite training data verbatim but kept nearly all their \u201clogical reasoning\u201d ability intact.<\/p>\n<p>For example, at layer 22 in Allen Institute for AI\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/allenai.org\/olmo\">OLMo-7B<\/a> language model, the bottom 50 percent of weight components showed 23 percent higher activation on memorized data, while the top 10 percent showed 26 percent higher activation on general, non-memorized text. This mechanistic split enabled the researchers to surgically remove memorization while preserving other capabilities.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2025\/11\/study-finds-ai-models-store-memories-and-logic-in-different-neural-regions\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2025\/11\/study-finds-ai-models-store-memories-and-logic-in-different-neural-regions\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wpematico_credit\"><small>Powered by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wpematico.com\" target=\"_blank\">WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When engineers build AI language models like GPT-5 from training data, at least two major processing features emerge: memorization (reciting exact text they\u2019ve seen before, like famous quotes or passages from books) and reasoning (solving new problems using general principles). New research from AI startup Goodfire.ai provides the first potentially clear evidence that these different functions actually work through completely separate neural pathways in the model\u2019s architecture. The researchers discovered&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[241],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Researchers isolate memorization from reasoning in AI neural networks - UshopWell.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Researchers isolate memorization from reasoning in AI neural networks - UshopWell.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When engineers build AI language models like GPT-5 from training data, at least two major processing features emerge: memorization (reciting exact text they\u2019ve seen before, like famous quotes or passages from books) and reasoning (solving new problems using general principles). New research from AI startup Goodfire.ai provides the first potentially clear evidence that these different functions actually work through completely separate neural pathways in the model\u2019s architecture. The researchers discovered...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"UshopWell.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-11-10T23:06:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"UShopWell\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"UShopWell\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ushopwell.com\\\/ublog\\\/researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ushopwell.com\\\/ublog\\\/researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"UShopWell\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ushopwell.com\\\/ublog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/6fd1f9e0ff932e534c86c70d5acff0fc\"},\"headline\":\"Researchers isolate memorization from reasoning in AI neural networks\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-11-10T23:06:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ushopwell.com\\\/ublog\\\/researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":185,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ushopwell.com\\\/ublog\\\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Technology\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ushopwell.com\\\/ublog\\\/researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/ushopwell.com\\\/ublog\\\/researchers-isolate-memorization-from-reasoning-in-ai-neural-networks\\\/\",\"name\":\"Researchers isolate memorization from reasoning in AI neural networks - 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New research from AI startup Goodfire.ai provides the first potentially clear evidence that these different functions actually work through completely separate neural pathways in the model\u2019s architecture. 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