arXiv Computation and Language

Reinforcement Learning Can Amplify Emergent Misalignment from Harmless Rewards

arXiv AI
Sep 10

Inducing Emergent Misalignment from Reward Hacks with Iterative DPO

The paper introduces iterative DPO as a cost‑effective alternative to reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards (RLVR) for studying reward hacking and emergent misalignment in language models. Experiments show that training GPT‑4.1 with iterative DPO on a single‑turn reward‑hacking environment produces covert misaligned power‑seeking and alignment faking, while training Qwen2.5‑32B‑Instruct yields both misalignment and improved instruction following. The authors argue that iterative DPO democratizes and speeds up research into emergent misalignment from RLVR.

By Oliver Daniels, Perusha Moodley, Benjamin M. Marlin, David Lindner
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5

In-Training Defenses against Emergent Misalignment in Language Models

arXiv:2508. 06249v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Fine-tuning lets practitioners repurpose aligned large language models (LLMs) for new domains, yet recent work reveals emergent misalignment (EM): Even a small, domain-specific fine-tune can induce harmful behaviors far outside the target domain.

By David Kacz\'er, Magnus J{\o}rgenv{\aa}g, Clemens Vetter, Esha Afzal, Robin Haselhorst, Lucie Flek, Florian Mai