According to Chris Olah, the central issue in the ongoing Sparse Autoencoder (SAE) debate is mechanistic faithfulness, which refers to how accurately an interpretability method reflects the internal mechanisms of AI models. Olah emphasizes that this concept is often conflated with other topics and is not always explicitly discussed. By introducing a clear, isolated example, he aims to focus industry attention on whether interpretability tools truly mirror the underlying computation of neural networks. This question is crucial for businesses relying on AI transparency and regulatory compliance, as mechanistic faithfulness directly impacts model trustworthiness, safety, and auditability (source: Chris Olah, Twitter, August 8, 2025).