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The Mask Is Not the Model: Auditing Prefix Invariance in Attention, State-Space, and Hybrid Sequence Models

2026-08-24 · arXiv: 2608.22876

One-line summary

An AI research paper on The Mask Is Not the Model: Auditing Prefix Invariance in Attention, State-Space, and Hybrid Sequence Models.

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Chinese explanation / 中文解读

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Original abstract

Hybrid sequence models must satisfy prefix invariance: representations at position t must not depend on future inputs, yet this is rarely verified. We formalize prefix invariance and give a lightweight audit, two forward passes, no training or gradients, yielding a per-layer score localizing where causality breaks. Attention-mask inspection, the field's default check, is incomplete: causality is a graph-level property, and leaks can occur via scans, aggregations, or normalization despite correct masks. Across 192 injected-fault trials on eight checkpoints, mask inspection detected none, while our audit localized all 192/192 to the exact layer. Static/dynamic analysis of chunked-scan code in transformers found the same defect in Zamba2 and Nemotron-H, an inter-chunk axis error fixed via the reference implementation. The method fits on one page and runs in seconds.

5.0Engineering value
7.0Research novelty
4.0Business relevance

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