Related papers: What Can We Actually Steer? A Multi-Behavior Study…
Activation-based steering enables Large Language Models (LLMs) to exhibit targeted behaviors by intervening on intermediate activations without retraining. Despite its widespread use, the mechanistic factors that govern when steering…
The ability to follow instructions is crucial for numerous real-world applications of language models. In pursuit of deeper insights and more powerful capabilities, we derive instruction-specific vector representations from language models…
Current large language models have dangerous capabilities, which are likely to become more problematic in the future. Activation steering techniques can be used to reduce risks from these capabilities. In this paper, we investigate the…
Researchers have been studying approaches to steer the behavior of Large Language Models (LLMs) and build personalized LLMs tailored for various applications. While fine-tuning seems to be a direct solution, it requires substantial…
Steering vectors are a lightweight method for controlling language model behavior by adding a learned bias to the activations at inference time. Although effective on average, steering effect sizes vary across samples and are unreliable for…
Steering vectors are a lightweight method to control language model behavior by adding a learned bias to the activations at inference time. Although steering demonstrates promising performance, recent work shows that it can be unreliable or…
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as autonomous decision-makers in strategic settings, yet we have limited tools for understanding their high-level behavioral traits. We use activation steering methods in game-theoretic…
Controlling the behavior of large language models (LLMs) at inference time is essential for aligning outputs with human abilities and safety requirements. \emph{Activation steering} provides a lightweight alternative to prompt engineering…
Activation steering has emerged as a powerful tool to shape LLM behavior without the need for weight updates. While its inherent brittleness and unreliability are well-documented, its safety implications remain underexplored. In this work,…
Recent work in activation steering has demonstrated the potential to better control the outputs of Large Language Models (LLMs), but it involves finding steering vectors. This is difficult because engineers do not typically know how…
Activation steering methods are widely used to control large language model (LLM) behavior and are often interpreted as revealing meaningful internal representations. This interpretation assumes that steering directions are identifiable and…
Changing the behavior of large language models (LLMs) can be as straightforward as editing the Transformer's residual streams using appropriately constructed "steering vectors." These modifications to internal neural activations, a form of…
Activation steering is a promising technique for controlling LLM behavior by adding semantically meaningful vectors directly into a model's hidden states during inference. It is often framed as a precise, interpretable, and potentially…
As large language models (LLMs) become more integrated into societal systems, the risk of them perpetuating and amplifying harmful biases becomes a critical safety concern. Traditional methods for mitigating bias often rely on data…
The field of large language models (LLMs) has grown rapidly in recent years, driven by the desire for better efficiency, interpretability, and safe use. Building on the novel approach of "activation engineering," this study explores…
LLMs have shown remarkable capabilities, but precisely controlling their response behavior remains challenging. Existing activation steering methods alter LLM behavior indiscriminately, limiting their practical applicability in settings…
Controlling the behaviors of large language models (LLM) is fundamental to their safety alignment and reliable deployment. However, existing steering methods are primarily driven by empirical insights and lack theoretical performance…
The influence of personas on Large Language Models (LLMs) has been widely studied, yet their direct impact on performance remains uncertain. This work explores a novel approach to guiding LLM behaviour through role vectors, an alternative…
Large Language Models (LLMs) are widely used by software engineers for programming tasks. However, research shows that LLMs often lack a deep understanding of program semantics. Even minor changes to syntax, such as renaming variables, can…
Large language models (LLMs) exhibit distinct and consistent personalities that greatly impact trust and engagement. While this means that personality frameworks would be highly valuable tools to characterize and control LLMs' behavior,…