arXiv AI

Localizing Safety Alignment: MLP Layers and Mid-Network Blocks Encode Refusal Behavior in Large Language Models

arXiv:2608. 11583v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Safety alignment in large language models is often treated as a distributed property of the entire network, yet its practical brittleness suggests that refusal behavior may be concentrated in a smaller set of parameters.

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 4

Beyond Shallow Alignment: How Post-Training Methods Determine Refusal Circuits And Steering Robustness

The paper investigates how different post‑training methods—supervised fine‑tuning, reasoning‑augmented fine‑tuning, and preference optimization (ORPO)—affect the internal computation of refusal behavior in language models. Experiments on Llama‑3.1‑8B, Gemma‑2‑9B, and Qwen3‑8B show that reasoning‑augmented training consistently creates a distinct refusal computation across models, while the architecture influences the internal structure and steerability of refusal. None of the studied methods simultaneously achieve a distributed refusal mechanism, preserve general capability, and allow easy corrective edits, indicating that current post‑training approaches are not a fully reliable defense for safety-critical applications.

By Hoang Cuong Nguyen, Mark Dras, Usman Naseem
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 25

RAS: Measuring LLM Safety Through Refusal Alignment

arXiv:2606. 25750v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Safety evaluation of large language models (LLMs) is commonly performed by querying models with unsafe or jailbreak prompts and judging whether their outputs violate a safety policy.

By Chang-Chieh Huang, Yan-Lun Chen, Chia-Mu Yu, Wei-Bin Lee
arXiv AI
Jul 7

Large Language Models Generate Harmful Responses Using a Distinct Mechanism, Shared Across Harm Types

arXiv:2604. 09544v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) undergo alignment training to avoid harmful behaviors, yet the resulting safeguards remain brittle: jailbreaks routinely bypass them, and fine-tuning on narrow domains can induce ``emergent misalignment'' that generalizes broadly.

By Hadas Orgad, Boyi Wei, Kaden Zheng, Martin Wattenberg, Peter Henderson, Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant, Yonatan Belinkov