Identity Neurons
Neurons encoding named entities — people, places, organizations.
About Identity Neurons
Identity neurons are the model's name-recognition system. They encode the representation of specific, nameable entities in the world — people (Albert Einstein, Marie Curie), places (Paris, the Amazon), organizations (NASA, the United Nations), products (iPhone, Tesla Model 3), and creative works (Hamlet, Star Wars). Identity neurons are not primarily about facts associated with those entities — that's handled by other atom types — but about recognizing that a specific named entity is present and activating the appropriate stored associations. Identity neurons represent 5–11 percent of classified features across models, with higher proportions in models trained on more entity-rich corpora (news, Wikipedia).