arXiv Machine Learning

On the Monitorability of Natural Language Autoencoders: Identification vs Discrimination

arXiv Computation and Language
1d ago

Verbalizing Activation Differences with Natural Language Autoencoders

The paper investigates natural language autoencoders (NLAs) as tools for verbalizing activation differences in large language models. It examines whether NLAs capture compositional structure, generalize to fine‑tuned models, recover fine‑tuning objectives, and can be specialized for model diffing. Experiments across four models show that NLAs largely succeed in these tasks, though they do not yet match state‑of‑the‑art diffing methods on emergent misalignment detection.

By Andrea Blasi N\'u\~nez, Gianluca Barmina, Federico Torrielli, Thiusius Rajeeth Savarimuthu, Peter Schneider-Kamp, Lukas Galke Poech
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 3

When a Data Artifact Isn't a Shortcut: Causal Auditing of Synthetic RLVR Corpora

The paper audits whether synthetic distractors in RLVR corpora act as shortcuts for learning policies. A classifier using only surface statistics barely outperforms chance, and manual inspection reveals that code distractors are almost identical to correct answers. Experiments with a paraphrase‑matched control show no exploitation advantage for the unmodified data, indicating that the detectable artifact was not used by the policy.

By Esther Xin
arXiv AI
Jul 20

Verbalizable Representations Form a Global Workspace in Language Models

arXiv:2607. 15495v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Out of everything the human brain processes, only a small fraction is consciously accessible, in the sense of being available for verbal report, deliberate control, and flexible reasoning.

By Wes Gurnee, Nicholas Sofroniew, Adam Pearce, Mateusz Piotrowski, Isaac Kauvar, Runjin Chen, Anna Soligo, Paul Bogdan, Euan Ong, Rowan Wang, Ben Thompson, David Abrahams, Subhash Kantamneni, Emmanuel Ameisen, Joshua Batson, Jack Lindsey
arXiv AI
Jul 7

The Rise of Verbal Tics in Large Language Models: A Systematic Analysis Across Frontier Models

arXiv:2604. 19139v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As Large Language Models (LLMs) continue to evolve through alignment techniques such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and Constitutional AI, a growing and increasingly conspicuous phenomenon has emerged: the proliferation of verbal tics--repetitive, formulaic linguistic patterns that pervade model outputs.

By Shuai Wu, Xue Li, Yanna Feng, Yufang Li, Zhijun Wang, Ran Wang
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

Amplifying, Not Learning: The Price of Out-of-Distribution Generalization in AI-Text Detection

The paper shows that AI‑text detectors, rather than learning a clear AI‑versus‑human boundary, amplify an inherited predictability axis that already exists in language models. This amplification causes detectors to over‑flag fluent, formal human writing while missing high‑temperature AI outputs, and the bias persists across languages, code, and detector architectures. A training‑free operator can relocate the bias but cannot erase it, underscoring that the unfairness is a structural cost of out‑of‑distribution generalization.

By Alexander Smirnov
arXiv AI
Sep 30

Training LLMs to Verbalize Evaluation Awareness

The paper introduces Verbalization Training (VT), a technique that encourages large language models (LLMs) to openly express their evaluation awareness (EA) without directly supervising their internal beliefs. VT works by truncating model rollouts just before spontaneous verbalizations, creating training prefixes that signal awareness, and then applying a reinforcement learning objective to increase calibrated verbalization. Experiments on models such as Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, Kimi K2.6, and Inkling show that VT boosts verbalized EA by 2.4–2.9× while keeping latent EA and overall behavior largely unchanged, and a causal study confirms that VT-induced verbalizations reflect newly acquired meta‑knowledge.

By Usman Anwar, Sahar Abdelnabi, David Krueger