arXiv AI

Post-Training Large Language Models with LLMON

Large Language Models (LLMs) treat all context tokens uniformly, which creates prompt injection vulnerabilities and unreliable instruction execution. The paper introduces LLMON (LLM Object Notation), a post‑training framework that separates executable instructions from passive data and requires explicit identifier‑based execution. Using a 4.6 B‑token structured corpus and post‑training on Granite‑4.1 models, LLMON reduces indirect prompt‑injection success rates from 53–100 % to 0.02–5.6 % while maintaining general capabilities, and provides attention‑based interpretability metrics to diagnose failure modes.

arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

Synthesizing Instruction-Tuning Datasets with Contrastive Decoding

The paper introduces CoDIT, a contrastive decoding technique that separates instruction-following behavior from pre-trained world knowledge in large language models. By generating responses that emphasize post-training instruction capabilities while suppressing shared pre-trained knowledge, CoDIT creates instruction-tuning datasets that lead to consistently better model performance than directly generated responses or existing public datasets. The authors also provide theoretical and empirical evidence that CoDIT effectively distills instruction-tuning knowledge from model parameters into text, facilitating cross-architecture transfer.

By Tatsuya Ichinose, Youmi Ma, Masanari Oi, Ryuto Koike, Naoaki Okazaki
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 2

Safety Targeted Embedding Exploit via Refinement

Safety training for large language models (LLMs) is conducted predominantly in English, leaving uncertain how well safety mechanisms generalize to low-resource languages and mixed-language code-switching. We show that this creates an epistemic gap in which models confidently generate harmful responses for inputs that fall outside the distribution of their safety training.

arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 23

SCOPE: Compiling Natural-Language Policies into Neurosymbolic Predicate Programs

SCOPE compiles natural‑language policies into neurosymbolic predicate programs that combine small neural models, deterministic extractors, and logical composition. The system is jointly optimized with adversarially generated counterexamples, achieving higher accuracy than prompt‑optimization, task‑decomposition, and workflow‑generation baselines on real‑world policy benchmarks. Programs trained with the weakest executor transfer to other models, enabling deployment on inexpensive models with stable, interpretable predictions.

By Arnon Mazza, Elad Levi
arXiv AI
Aug 26

Semantic Overlays: Mitigating Prompt Injection with Annotations Beyond Tokens and Steering Vectors

The paper introduces Semantic Overlays, a steering technique that adds non‑textual annotations to a language model’s input by applying learned adapters at specific prefill positions. These overlays create an out‑of‑band channel that encodes span identity and complex semantics, enabling the model to interpret marked text differently—such as rewriting code in a specified language or ignoring executable instructions. Experiments show that Semantic Overlays dramatically reduce prompt‑injection success rates while preserving model utility and readability of marked spans.

By Joshua Penman