The paper argues that aligning large language models (LLMs) at the level of latent representations—specifically by matching their internal categorization of moral concepts to human prototype-based judgments—improves safety. Current alignment methods that focus on observable responses fail to preserve fine-grained moral categorization, leaving models vulnerable to adversarial rephrasings. By optimizing representational similarity, the authors demonstrate that LLMs can maintain more robust moral categorization and exhibit better adversarial robustness across multiple benchmarks and model sizes.
By Lingyu Li, Yan Teng, Yingchun Wang, Xia Hu
The article argues that current evaluations of large language models’ moral competence focus mainly on whether outputs align with human moral values—the so‑called moral value problem—while neglecting the moral norm problem, which concerns the models’ ability to identify and apply context‑sensitive moral norms. It attributes this imbalance to the field’s reliance on descriptive ethics frameworks that emphasize value representation over normative application. The authors review existing benchmarks, highlight three gaps—lack of ground‑truth norm data, insufficient evaluation of intermediate reasoning, and limited focus on context‑relevant features—and propose a research agenda to develop formal normative representations, expert‑annotated datasets, and evaluation protocols that distinguish between value‑level and norm‑level competence.
By Aidan Kierans, Ritam Dutt, Kaley Rittichier, Shiri Dori-Hacohen, Avijit Ghosh
The paper argues that AI alignment depends on a system’s ability to exhibit a coherent moral policy—stable, monotonic, decisive, and Pareto‑viable—rather than on any specific moral standard. The authors test nine large language models across varied moral scenarios and find that none maintain consistent verdicts, with surface‑form changes causing up to 99% shifts in outcomes. This indicates that current LLM agents lack the structural moral competence required for meaningful alignment.
By Arno Libert, Derck W. E. Prinzhorn, Daan R. Henselmans
arXiv:2510. 16380v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As AI systems progress, we rely more on them to make decisions with us and for us.
By Yu Ying Chiu, Michael S. Lee, Rachel Calcott, Brandon Handoko, Paul de Font-Reaulx, Rapha\"el Milli\`ere, Paula Rodriguez, Chen Bo Calvin Zhang, Ziwen Han, Udari Madhushani Sehwag, Yash Maurya, Christina Q Knight, Harry R. Lloyd, Florence Bacus, Conor Downey, Mantas Mazeika, Bing Liu, Yejin Choi, Mitchell L Gordon, Sydney Levine
arXiv:2603.23114v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: A human's moral decision depends heavily on the context. Yet research on LLM morality has largely studied fixed scenarios. We address this gap by i...
By Adrian Sauter, Mona Schirmer
arXiv:2603. 00048v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in sensitive applications including psychological support, healthcare, and high-stakes decision-making.
By Erica Coppolillo, Emilio Ferrara
arXiv:2608. 12368v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agreement with human judgments is a common proxy for evaluating the alignment of large language models (LLMs).
By Octavian M. Machidon, Alina L. Machidon, Vojko Strahovnik, Mateja Centa Strahovnik, Jonas Miklav\v{c}i\v{c}, Marko Robnik \v{S}ikonja
The study investigates how large language models encode moral knowledge by training linear probes for each category of Moral Foundations Theory. It finds that the model’s representations for different moral foundations occupy distinct, largely independent dimensions yet share a common positive component, indicating an integrated but nuanced moral structure. This geometry is consistent across model architectures and scales, emerges early in pre‑training, and reflects corpus statistics rather than the individualizing/binding distinction of the theory.
By Orion Reblitz-Richardson
arXiv:2608. 07642v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Aligning large language models (LLMs) with human values remains a major challenge, especially for trustworthy AI.
By Yuanhong Wu, Djallel Bouneffouf, D. Frank Hsu
arXiv:2605. 22641v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Detecting Schwartz values in political text is difficult because implicit cues often depend on surrounding arguments and fine-grained distinctions between neighboring values.
By V\'ictor Yeste, Paolo Rosso
arXiv:2603.16017v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) increasingly participate in morally sensitive decision-making, yet how they organize ethical frameworks across r...
By Fan Huang, Haewoon Kwak, Jisun An
arXiv:2606. 11635v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: For highly capable AI systems to operate safely in dynamic, open-ended environments, they must be able to identify, understand, and respond to moral reasons for action, and constrain their behaviour accordingly.
By Menghang Zhu, Seth Lazar