Related papers: Conceptors for Semantic Steering
Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable progress in their reasoning capabilities, such as Chain-of-Thought (CoT). Most approaches rely on CoT rationales. Previous studies have shown that LLMs often…
Machine learning models are trained with relatively simple objectives, such as next token prediction. However, on deployment, they appear to capture a more fundamental representation of their input data. It is of interest to understand the…
A conceptual and computational framework is proposed for modelling of human sensorimotor control, and is exemplified for the sensorimotor task of steering a car. The framework emphasises control intermittency, and extends on existing models…
Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate strong chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning abilities, while smaller models (<= 3B parameters) significantly underperform on multi-step reasoning tasks. Based on empirical analyses of the Qwen-2.5 model…
We present a method to create interpretable concept sliders that enable precise control over attributes in image generations from diffusion models. Our approach identifies a low-rank parameter direction corresponding to one concept while…
Latent space steering methods provide a practical approach to controlling large language models by applying steering vectors to intermediate activations, guiding outputs toward desired behaviors while avoiding retraining. Despite their…
Class Activation Mapping (CAM) has been widely adopted to generate saliency maps which provides visual explanations for deep neural networks (DNNs). The saliency maps are conventionally generated by fusing the channels of the target feature…
Activation steering controls LLM behaviour towards target behaviour by intervening in internal representations, yet it often degrades reasoning and retrieval performance. We argue that a primary cause of this trade-off is attention…
Steering vectors (SVs) offer a lightweight way to control large language models (LLMs) at inference time by shifting hidden activations, providing a practical middle ground between prompting and fine-tuning. Yet SVs can be unreliable in…
Steering vectors have emerged as a lightweight and effective approach for aligning large language models (LLMs) at inference time, enabling modulation over model behaviors by shifting LLM representations towards a target behavior. However,…
Sparse autoencoders (SAEs) promise a unified approach for mechanistic interpretability, concept discovery, and model steering in LLMs and LVLMs. However, realizing this potential requires learned features to be both interpretable and…
Vision-Language Models (VLM) exhibit strong reasoning capabilities, showing promise for end-to-end autonomous driving systems. Chain-of-Thought (CoT), as VLM's widely used reasoning strategy, is facing critical challenges. Existing textual…
Steering has emerged as a practical approach to enable post-hoc guidance of LLMs towards enforcing a specific behavior. However, it remains largely underexplored for multimodal LLMs (MLLMs); furthermore, existing steering techniques, such…
We introduce Sparse Concept Anchoring, a method that biases latent space to position a targeted subset of concepts while allowing others to self-organize, using only minimal supervision (labels for <0.1% of examples per anchored concept).…
Recent work on domain-specific reasoning with large language models (LLMs) often relies on training-intensive approaches that require parameter updates. While activation steering has emerged as a parameter efficient alternative, existing…
Activation steering methods enable inference-time control of large language model (LLM) behavior without retraining, but current approaches face a fundamental trade-off: sample-efficient methods suboptimally capture steering signals from…
Vision Language Models (VLMs) are increasingly being used in a broad range of applications, bringing their security and behavioral control to the forefront. While existing approaches for behavioral control or output redirection, like system…
As vision-language models (VLMs) are increasingly deployed in open-world scenarios, they can be easily induced by visual jailbreak attacks to generate harmful content, posing serious risks to model safety and trustworthy usage. Recent…
Activation steering -- adding a vector to a model's residual stream to modify its behavior -- is widely used in safety evaluations as if the model cannot detect the intervention. We test this assumption, introducing steering awareness: a…
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…