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In reinforcement learning (RL), it is challenging to learn directly from high-dimensional observations, where data augmentation has recently been shown to remedy this via encoding invariances from raw pixels. Nevertheless, we empirically…

Large Language Models (LLMs) are able to improve their responses when instructed to do so, a capability known as self-correction. When instructions provide only the task's goal without specific details about potential issues in the…

In recent years, continual learning with pre-training (CLPT) has received widespread interest, instead of its traditional focus of training from scratch. The use of strong pre-trained models (PTMs) can greatly facilitate knowledge transfer…

Large language models excel at complex instructions yet struggle to deviate from their helpful assistant persona, as post-training instills strong priors that resist conflicting instructions. We introduce system prompt strength, a…

Large language models often exhibit increased sycophantic behavior after preference-based post-training, showing a stronger tendency to affirm a user's stated or implied belief even when this conflicts with factual accuracy or sound…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have grown increasingly powerful, yet ensuring their decisions remain transparent and trustworthy requires self-consistency -- no contradictions in their internal reasoning. Our study reveals that even on simple…

Large language models (LLMs) frequently produce confident but incorrect answers, partly because common binary scoring conventions reward answering over honestly expressing uncertainty. We study whether prompt-only interventions --…

Alignment faking (AF) refers to a model strategically complying with a training objective to avoid behavioural modification while preserving its deployment preferences. Understanding when and why AF arises matters as models grow better at…

Jailbreaking in Large Language Models (LLMs) threatens their safe use in sensitive domains like education by allowing users to bypass ethical safeguards. This study focuses on detecting jailbreaks in 2-Sigma, a clinical education platform…

Large Language Models (LLMs) are so powerful that they sometimes learn correlations between labels and features that are irrelevant to the task, leading to poor generalization on out-of-distribution data. We propose explanation-based…

Instruction-tuned large language models (IT-LLMs) exhibit strong zero-shot reasoning, yet their ability to execute simple, self-contained instructions remains underexplored, despite this being foundational to complex instruction-following.…

Human cognition, driven by complex neurochemical processes, oscillates between imagination and reality and learns to self-correct whenever such subtle drifts lead to hallucinations or unsafe associations. In recent years, LLMs have…

This study reveals a previously unexplored vulnerability in the safety alignment of Large Language Models (LLMs). Existing aligned LLMs predominantly respond to unsafe queries with refusals, which often begin with a fixed set of prefixes…

Training expert LLMs in domains with scarce data is difficult, often relying on multiple-choice questions (MCQs). However, standard outcome-based reinforcement learning (RL) on MCQs is risky. While it may improve accuracy, we observe it…

Instruction finetuning is standard practice for improving LLM performance, yet it remains unclear whether it enhances reasoning or merely induces surface-level pattern matching. We investigate this by evaluating base and instruction-tuned…

This work introduces a novel framework for evaluating LLMs' capacity to balance instruction-following with critical reasoning when presented with multiple-choice questions containing no valid answers. Through systematic evaluation across…

In many real-world applications, users rely on natural language instructions to guide large language models (LLMs) across a wide range of tasks. These instructions are often complex, diverse, and subject to frequent change. However, LLMs do…

Large Language models (LLMs) can be induced to solve non-trivial problems with "few-shot" prompts including illustrative problem-solution examples. Now if the few-shots also include "chain of thought" (CoT) explanations, which are of the…

A popular approach for improving the correctness of output from large language models (LLMs) is Self-Consistency - poll the LLM multiple times and output the most frequent solution. Existing Self-Consistency techniques always generate a…

This study examines how user-provided suggestions affect Large Language Models (LLMs) in a simulated educational context, where sycophancy poses significant risks. Testing five different LLMs from the OpenAI GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 model classes…