arXiv AI

Evaluating Steering Techniques using Human Similarity Judgments

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 Computation and Language
Sep 30

Cognitive Expert Language Models Better Align with the Corresponding Brain Systems

The study investigates whether language models tailored to specific cognitive domains better align with corresponding brain systems. By prompting and fine‑tuning large language models into six domain experts—sensory, spatial, numerical, reasoning, social, and abstract—the authors find that each expert’s representations more closely match the brain region associated with its domain than other experts. This domain‑specific alignment holds across multiple base models and fMRI datasets, while overall prediction accuracy remains largely unchanged, indicating that regional alignment can be obscured when summarizing across the brain.

By Zhivar Sourati, Mengxuan Helen Wu, Nona Ghazizadeh, Jonas Kaplan, Morteza Dehghani, Samuel A. Nastase
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 9

Towards Understanding Steering Strength

arXiv:2602. 02712v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A popular approach to post-training control of large language models (LLMs) is the steering of intermediate latent representations.

By Magamed Taimeskhanov, Samuel Vaiter, Damien Garreau
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 31

Tracing the complexity profiles of different linguistic phenomena through the intrinsic dimension of LLM representations

The paper investigates the intrinsic dimension (ID) of large language model (LLM) representations as an indicator of linguistic complexity. By comparing ID across model layers for coordination vs. subordination, right‑branching vs. center‑embedding, and unambiguous vs. ambiguous attachment, the authors find consistent ID differences that align with established complexity contrasts. Experiments across six LLMs, including representational similarity and layer pruning analyses, confirm that more complex phenomena produce higher ID profiles, with peaks occurring at different layers for each contrast.

By Marco Baroni, Emily Cheng, Iria de-Dios-Flores, Francesca Franzon
arXiv AI
Jul 24

Response drift across frontier large language models

arXiv:2607. 20454v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: All frontier large language models (LLMs) exhibit response drift -- producing outputs that deviate from expert-validated references -- yet the magnitude and structure of this drift remain uncharacterised by systematic human evaluation.

By Mohammed Aledhari, Ali Aledhari, Fatimah Aledhari, Gowtham Venkat Eathamokkala, Mohamed Rahouti
arXiv AI
Sep 16

Do LLMs Have Values? A Quantitative Analysis and Alignment Framework for Values in Large Language Models

The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) possess intrinsic value systems and how to quantify and align them. By projecting responses from 106 LLMs and 95,000 human survey profiles into a shared sociological space, the authors confirm that LLMs do have values, though these values form a concentrated, idealized core rather than mirroring human diversity. They introduce the Prior-Environment-Cognition (PEC) framework to mathematically define value expression and propose an adaptive Alignment Prescription that identifies minimal interventions—ranging from prompts to targeted parameter updates—to steer LLM values efficiently without harming general performance.

By Keqing Zhang, Jingyu Chen, Yufan Liu, Yongqiang Zhu, Nai Ding, Lai Jiang, Congyan Lang, Bing Li, Weiming Hu