Related papers: Do as I do (Safely): Mitigating Task-Specific Fine…

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) for downstream tasks often leads to catastrophic forgetting, notably degrading the safety of originally aligned models. While some existing methods attempt to restore safety by incorporating…

Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as powerful tools for addressing a wide range of general inquiries and tasks. Despite this, fine-tuning aligned LLMs on smaller, domain-specific datasets, critical to adapting them to specialized…

Training large language models to follow instructions makes them perform better on a wide range of tasks and generally become more helpful. However, a perfectly helpful model will follow even the most malicious instructions and readily…

Recently, major AI providers such as Google and OpenAI have introduced Finetuning-as-a-Service (FaaS), which allows users to customize Large Language Models (LLMs) using their own data. However, this service is vulnerable to safety…

Current Large Language Models (LLMs), even those tuned for safety and alignment, are susceptible to jailbreaking. Some have found that just further fine-tuning an aligned model with benign data (i.e., data without harmful content)…

Large language models often lose previously aligned safety behaviors when fine-tuned on benign data, a phenomenon known as catastrophic forgetting. Prior work shows that adding random safety examples can mitigate this effect, but it remains…

Safety fine-tuning helps align Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences for their safe deployment. To better understand the underlying factors that make models safe via safety fine-tuning, we design a synthetic data generation…

Instruction-following language models are trained to be helpful and safe, yet their safety behavior can deteriorate under benign fine-tuning and worsen under adversarial updates. Existing defenses often offer limited protection or force a…

Large language models require continuous adaptation to new tasks while preserving safety alignment. However, fine-tuning on even benign data often compromises safety behaviors, including refusal of harmful requests, truthfulness, and…

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) on additional datasets is often necessary to optimize them for specific downstream tasks. However, existing safety alignment measures, which restrict harmful behavior during inference, are…

Fine-tuning a general-purpose large language model (LLM) for a specific domain or task has become a routine procedure for ordinary users. However, fine-tuning is known to remove the safety alignment features of the model, even when the…

Recent breakthroughs in Large Language Models (LLMs) have led to their adoption across a wide range of tasks, ranging from code generation to machine translation and sentiment analysis, etc. Red teaming/Safety alignment efforts show that…

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) based on human preferences, commonly achieved through reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), has been effective in improving their performance. However, maintaining LLM safety throughout…

Instruction fine-tuning has emerged as a critical technique for customizing Large Language Models (LLMs) to specific applications. However, recent studies have highlighted significant security vulnerabilities in fine-tuned LLMs. Existing…

The safety alignment of large language models (LLMs) is becoming increasingly important with their democratization. In this paper, we study the safety degradation that comes with adapting LLMs to new tasks. We attribute this safety…

Finetuning can significantly modify the behavior of large language models, including introducing harmful or unsafe behaviors. To study these risks, researchers develop model organisms: models finetuned to exhibit specific known behaviors…

Finetuning large language models (LLMs) enables user-specific customization but introduces critical safety risks: even a few harmful examples can compromise safety alignment. A common mitigation strategy is to update the model more strongly…

Harmful fine-tuning can invalidate safety alignment of large language models, exposing significant safety risks. In this paper, we utilize the attention sink mechanism to mitigate harmful fine-tuning. Specifically, we first measure a…

Large language models (LLMs) are often fine-tuned for use on downstream tasks, though this can degrade capabilities learned during previous training. This phenomenon, often referred to as catastrophic forgetting, has important potential…

Modern language models (LMs) need to follow human instructions while being faithful; yet, they often fail to achieve both. Here, we provide concrete evidence of a trade-off between instruction following (i.e., follow open-ended…