Writability and the Pathway: A Controlled Study of Knowledge Injection into Addressed Memory
Abstract
Addressed conditional memory provides a local surface for post-hoc knowledge injection, but a successful write need not transfer to a new question or preserve untargeted behavior. This study combines a controlled GPT-2 comparison with production-memory experiments on Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-FP8 and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash. Newly initialized modules attached to frozen GPT-2 are tested in a 2 x 2 design: row-only versus row-plus-projection updates, each with or without fixed module-residual anchoring. All arms reproduce 50 trained completions in each of three sampling seeds. Natural-question target-string hits average 5.3% for both row-only arms, 28.7% for unanchored projection updates, and 22.0% with anchoring, while strict answer scores remain zero. Anchoring lowers measured drift; lexical hits do not establish entity-specific retrieval. In the archived Qwen experiments, gradient writes make the designated first answer token top-ranked for 132 independently reset targets, comprising 93 new promotions and 39 already top-ranked targets. A separate matched 24-target comparison gives 13 new promotions with Adam versus two with SPSA at equal iteration counts but unequal computational procedures. An 80-row case includes saved continuations and a replay record, while reformulations bound its scope. Six DeepSeek zero-order cases yield one new target-token promotion and one regression. These results support bounded writing feasibility and separate trained expression, question-form behavior, and preservation; first-token rankings do not establish complete-answer success or universal conditions for writable memory.
