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Related papers: Backtracking for Safety

200 papers

Large language models (LLMs) are vulnerable to jailbreak attacks - resulting in harmful, unethical, or biased text generations. However, existing jailbreaking methods are computationally costly. In this paper, we propose the weak-to-strong…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-25 Xuandong Zhao , Xianjun Yang , Tianyu Pang , Chao Du , Lei Li , Yu-Xiang Wang , William Yang Wang

As large language models (LLMs) rapidly evolve, they bring significant conveniences to our work and daily lives, but also introduce considerable safety risks. These models can generate texts with social biases or unethical content, and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Zhihao Liu , Chenhui Hu

The advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs) has significantly impacted various domains, including Web search, healthcare, and software development. However, as these models scale, they become more vulnerable to cybersecurity risks,…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-10-01 Qin Liu , Wenjie Mo , Terry Tong , Jiashu Xu , Fei Wang , Chaowei Xiao , Muhao Chen

Generative AI, including large language models (LLMs) have the potential -- and already are being used -- to increase the speed, scale, and types of unsafe conversations online. LLMs lower the barrier for entry for bad actors to create…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-07-31 Owen Hoffman , Kangze Peng , Zehua You , Sajid Kamal , Sukrit Venkatagiri

The widespread adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) raises concerns about the potential harmfulness of their responses. In this paper, we first investigate the harmfulness of responses from four general-purpose LLMs. Next, we propose…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Giordano d'Aloisio , David Williams , Giusy Annunziata , Zhiwei Fei , Antinisca Di Marco , Federica Sarro

Backdoor data poisoning, inserted within instruction examples used to fine-tune a foundation Large Language Model (LLM) for downstream tasks (\textit{e.g.,} sentiment prediction), is a serious security concern due to the evasive nature of…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-08-23 Jayaram Raghuram , George Kesidis , David J. Miller

Low-rank approximation techniques have become the de facto standard for fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) due to their reduced computational and memory requirements. This paper investigates the effectiveness of these methods in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-30 Saswat Das , Marco Romanelli , Cuong Tran , Zarreen Reza , Bhavya Kailkhura , Ferdinando Fioretto

The risks derived from large language models (LLMs) generating deceptive and damaging content have been the subject of considerable research, but even safe generations can lead to problematic downstream impacts. In our study, we shift the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Federico Bianchi , James Zou

Mechanistic interpretability reveals that safety-critical behaviors (e.g., alignment, jailbreak, backdoor) in Large Language Models (LLMs) are grounded in specialized functional components. However, existing safety attribution methods…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-25 Miao Yu , Siyuan Fu , Moayad Aloqaily , Zhenhong Zhou , Safa Otoum , Xing fan , Kun Wang , Yufei Guo , Qingsong Wen

Large language models (LLMs) employ safety mechanisms to prevent harmful outputs, yet these defenses primarily rely on semantic pattern matching. We show that encoding harmful prompts as coherent mathematical problems -- using formalisms…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Haoyu Zhang , Mohammad Zandsalimy , Shanu Sushmita

Detecting life-threatening language is essential for safeguarding individuals in distress, promoting mental health and well-being, and preventing potential harm and loss of life. This paper presents an effective approach to identifying…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-13 Thanh Thi Nguyen , Campbell Wilson , Janis Dalins

Recent developments in balancing the usefulness and safety of Large Language Models (LLMs) have raised a critical question: Are mainstream NLP tasks adequately aligned with safety consideration? Our study, focusing on safety-sensitive…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Yu Fu , Yufei Li , Wen Xiao , Cong Liu , Yue Dong

This paper presents a comprehensive empirical study on the safety alignment capabilities. We evaluate what matters for safety alignment in LLMs and LRMs to provide essential insights for developing more secure and reliable AI systems. We…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-25 Xing Li , Hui-Ling Zhen , Lihao Yin , Xianzhi Yu , Zhenhua Dong , Mingxuan Yuan

Large language models can produce toxic or inappropriate text even for benign inputs, creating risks when deployed at scale. Detoxification is therefore important for safety and user trust, particularly when we want to reduce harmful…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Baturay Saglam , Dionysis Kalogerias

The safety alignment of large language models (LLMs) remains vulnerable, as their initial behavior can be easily jailbroken by even relatively simple attacks. Since infilling a fixed template between the input instruction and initial model…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-05 Chak Tou Leong , Qingyu Yin , Jian Wang , Wenjie Li

The open-endedness of large language models (LLMs) combined with their impressive capabilities may lead to new safety issues when being exploited for malicious use. While recent studies primarily focus on probing toxic outputs that can be…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-11-30 Jiaxin Wen , Pei Ke , Hao Sun , Zhexin Zhang , Chengfei Li , Jinfeng Bai , Minlie Huang

Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate impressive capabilities across various fields, yet their increasing use raises critical security concerns. This article reviews recent literature addressing key issues in LLM security, with a focus…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Benji Peng , Keyu Chen , Ming Li , Pohsun Feng , Ziqian Bi , Junyu Liu , Xinyuan Song , Qian Niu

Large language models (LLMs) and multimodal LLMs are typically safety-aligned before release to prevent harmful content generation. However, recent studies show that safety behaviors are concentrated in a small subset of parameters, making…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Zhaoxin Wang , Jiaming Liang , Fengbin Zhu , Weixiang Zhao , Junfeng Fang , Jiayi Ji , Handing Wang , Tat-Seng Chua

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance across diverse tasks. Nevertheless, they still pose notable safety risks due to potential misuse for malicious purposes. Jailbreaking, which seeks to induce models to…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Hua Tang , Lingyong Yan , Yukun Zhao , Shuaiqiang Wang , Jizhou Huang , Dawei Yin

Converting high-level tasks described by natural language into formal specifications like Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) is a key step towards providing formal safety guarantees over cyber-physical systems (CPS). While the compliance of the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Junle Li , Siqi Chen , Jiakai Li , Meiqi Tian , Bingzhuo Zhong