arXiv Machine Learning

ORBIT: Training-Free Multi-Attribute Behavioral Steering via Orthogonal Subspace Rotation

arXiv:2606. 22357v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Language models are widely used in assistant settings, where controlling behavioral attributes is often essential.

arXiv AI
Sep 10

Training-Free Task Vectors for LLM Behavioral Control

The paper introduces Training-Free Task Vectors (TFTVs), a method for computing task-vector-like directions in large language models without fine‑tuning. TFTVs map activation steering vectors to rank‑one weight‑space edits using only forward‑pass statistics, enabling arithmetic operations such as learning, forgetting, and composing edits. Experiments show that TFTVs consistently amplify, suppress, and combine target behaviors while preserving general knowledge, outperforming other editing and steering baselines.

By Gabriel J. Perin, Lucas Boscaini, Andr\'e Araujo, Nina S. T. Hirata
arXiv AI
Sep 10

Steering Geometry: Validating Human Value Geometry in LLM Steering Space

arXiv:2609.06289v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in alignment-sensitive contexts, activation steering has emerged as a lightweight, inferenc...

By Mohammad Mahdi Abootorabi, Armin Saghafian, Ali Bazshoushtari, Hamid Rezaei, EunJeong Hwang, Vered Shwartz, Parvin Mousavi, Purang Abolmaesumi
arXiv AI
Jul 23

Statistically Grounded Sparse-Feature Interventions for Activation-Space Control in Large Language Models

arXiv:2607. 19364v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Activation steering offers a lightweight alternative to fine-tuning for behavioral control of large language models, but SAE-based steering methods often rely on learned steering objectives or single-criterion feature selection.

By Oshayer Siddique, J. M Areeb Uzair Alam, Md Jobayer Rahman Rafy, Syed Rifat Raiyan, Hasan Mahmud, Md Kamrul Hasan
arXiv Machine Learning
5d ago

Adaptive Multi-Value Control in LLMs via Causal Activation Steering

The paper introduces AIMES, a framework for adaptive multi-value activation steering in large language models. AIMES builds layer‑specific bipolar directions for moral‑foundation values and uses intermediate‑layer vocabulary readouts as online observers to guide a controller that adjusts intervention strengths at each decoding step. Experiments across instruction‑tuned model families show that AIMES achieves depth‑dependent advantages over fixed joint steering and prompt‑based steering, with smaller activation‑space interventions and comparable response quality.

By Payel Bhattacharjee, Ravi Tandon
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 3

IDEEA: training-free Input-Dependent stEEring via Activation cluster matching

IDEA is a training‑free, input‑dependent steering method for large language models that matches activations to cluster‑specific directions aligned with a target concept. It clusters positive and negative activation supports per attention head, solves an optimal‑matching problem to create a pool of cluster‑conditional directions, and selects the best match for each input at inference time. This approach preserves the input’s original representation while improving the truth × info rate on TruthfulQA by an average of 9.9% (up to 23.5%) over input‑independent baselines.

By Zheng Wang, Muchen Li, Renjie Liao, Yan Leng
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 15

Towards Steering without Sacrifice: Principled Training of Steering Vectors for Prompt-only Interventions

arXiv:2605. 05983v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recently, steering vectors (SVs) have emerged as an effective and lightweight approach to steer behaviors of large language models (LLMs), among which fine-tuned SVs are more effective than optimization-free ones.

By Yuntai Bao, Qinfeng Li, Xinyan Yu, Ge Su, Wenqi Zhang, Liu Yan, Haiqin Weng, Jianwei Yin, Xuhong Zhang