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Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used as epistemic partners in everyday reasoning, yet their errors remain predominantly analyzed through predictive metrics rather than through their interpretive effects on human judgment. This…
Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have garnered wide attention and led to successful products such as ChatGPT and GPT-4. Their proficiency in adhering to instructions and delivering harmless, helpful, and honest (3H)…
A centerpiece of the ever-popular reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) approach to fine-tuning autoregressive language models is the explicit training of a reward model to emulate human feedback, distinct from the language…
We posit that large language models (LLMs) should be capable of expressing their intrinsic uncertainty in natural language. For example, if the LLM is equally likely to output two contradicting answers to the same question, then its…
Large language models (LLMs) are trained on vast amounts of text from the internet, which contains both factual and misleading information about the world. While unintuitive from a classic view of LMs, recent work has shown that the truth…
Generating long, coherent text remains a challenge for large language models (LLMs), as they lack hierarchical planning and structured organization in discourse generation. We introduce Structural Alignment, a novel method that aligns LLMs…
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (\textbf{RLHF}) has emerged as a dominant approach for aligning LLM outputs with human preferences. Inspired by the success of RLHF, we study the performance of multiple algorithms that learn from…
Large language models are often described as sycophantic, in the sense that they appear to flatter users or mirror their beliefs. We argue that this label is conceptually misleading: sycophancy implies motives and strategic intent, which…
Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have shifted the post-training paradigm from traditional instruction tuning and human preference alignment toward reinforcement learning (RL) focused on reasoning capabilities. However,…
The demand for regulating potentially risky behaviors of large language models (LLMs) has ignited research on alignment methods. Since LLM alignment heavily relies on reward models for optimization or evaluation, neglecting the quality of…
In this paper, we investigate the degree to which fine-tuning in Large Language Models (LLMs) effectively mitigates versus merely conceals undesirable behavior. Through the lens of semi-realistic role-playing exercises designed to elicit…
Large Language Models have been demonstrating broadly satisfactory generative abilities for users, which seems to be due to the intensive use of human feedback that refines responses. Nevertheless, suggestibility inherited via human…
Language model calibration refers to the alignment between the confidence of the model and the actual performance of its responses. While previous studies point out the overconfidence phenomenon in Large Language Models (LLMs) and show that…
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…
Training language models via reinforcement learning often relies on imperfect proxy rewards, since ground truth rewards that precisely define the intended behavior are rarely available. Standard metrics for assessing the quality of proxy…
We study estimation and statistical inference for reward models used in aligning large language models (LLMs). A key component of LLM alignment is reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), where humans compare pairs of…
Recent research has made significant strides in aligning large language models (LLMs) with helpfulness and harmlessness. In this paper, we argue for the importance of alignment for \emph{honesty}, ensuring that LLMs proactively refuse to…
Language Models (LMs) may acquire harmful knowledge, and yet feign ignorance of these topics when under audit. Inspired by the recent discovery of deception-related behaviour patterns in LMs, we aim to train classifiers that detect when a…
When a language model agrees with a user's false belief, is it failing to detect the error, or noticing and agreeing anyway? We show the latter. Across twelve open-weight models from five labs, spanning small to frontier scale, the same…
Many social science questions ask how linguistic properties causally affect an audience's attitudes and behaviors. Because text properties are often interlinked (e.g., angry reviews use profane language), we must control for possible latent…