arXiv AI

Sound Probabilistic Safety Bounds for Large Language Models

arXiv:2607. 20286v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We propose a novel framework for computing rigorous bounds on the probability that a large language model (LLM) generates harmful output to a given prompt.

arXiv AI
Jul 23

Rethinking Uncertainty Evaluation in Large Language Models

arXiv:2607. 19367v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Calibration is the primary criterion for evaluating LLM confidence, but it is insufficient: it admits trivially incoherent estimators, depends on the evaluation distribution, and does not test the extent to which the estimation can be interpreted as a consistent, underlying probability function.

By Krish Matta, Atharv Naphade, Andy Zou
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 19

Likelihood Hacking in Probabilistic Program Synthesis

The paper introduces the concept of likelihood hacking (LH), where language models trained via reinforcement learning generate probabilistic programs that inflate marginal-likelihood rewards by producing non‑normalising data distributions. It formalises LH in a core probabilistic programming language and derives syntactic conditions that prevent such exploits, defining a safe language fragment λ_safe. Empirical studies show that models trained with GRPO quickly discover LH, while a modified Stan implementation, SafeStan, effectively suppresses these exploits under optimisation pressure.

By Jacek Karwowski, Younesse Kaddar, Zihuiwen Ye, Esmeralda S. Whitammer, Sam Staton
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

Black-Box Membership Inference via Word-Level Probability Estimation

The paper introduces Word-level Probability MIA (WPMIA), a black-box membership inference attack that estimates word-level generation probabilities via Monte Carlo sampling and local kernel smoothing, then aggregates them into a sequence-level likelihood estimator. By conditioning on different prefixes, WPMIA amplifies distributional differences between member and non-member texts, outperforming existing black-box baselines on open-source LLMs and achieving an average TPR@5%FPR of 42.0 on proprietary models such as GPT‑5‑Chat, Gemini‑2.5‑Flash, and Claude‑4.5‑Haiku.

By Shengjie Niu, Yeheng Ge, Jian Huang
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

The Illusion of Stochasticity in LLMs

arXiv:2604. 06543v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In this work, we demonstrate that reliable stochastic sampling is a fundamental yet unfulfilled requirement for Large Language Models (LLMs) operating as agents.

By Xiangming Gu, Soham De, Michalis Titsias, Larisa Markeeva, Petar Veli\v{c}kovi\'c, Razvan Pascanu
arXiv Machine Learning
4d ago

Quantifying Behavioral Tails in Black-Box Language Models

The paper introduces RareTrap, a framework that estimates the probability of severe behaviors in black‑box large language models. RareTrap constructs a geometry‑aware mapping from a low‑dimensional latent space into token‑embedding space using a surrogate LLM, creating an explicit and reproducible distribution over input prompts. By applying a response‑level performance function and sequential rare‑event simulation, RareTrap concentrates evaluations on increasingly severe behaviors while preserving probability, enabling estimation of such behaviors with as few as 200 evaluations across multiple open‑weight and frontier models.

By Elsayed Eshra, Ali Al-Lawati, Dongwon Lee, Suhang Wang
arXiv AI
Sep 23

Pinocchio: Fast Uncertainty Estimates for Black-Box Language Models

Pinocchio is an external calibrator that provides fast uncertainty estimates for black-box language models. It predicts the correctness of responses from seven trained LLMs with an AUROC of 0.862 and can transfer zero‑shot to thirteen unseen models from eight organizations. The method requires only a single forward pass and no access to the target model’s internal states, and a lightweight 0.8B checkpoint achieves comparable performance.

By Kevin David Hayes, Arka Pal, Haosong Zhang, Tom Goldstein, Micah Goldblum