arXiv AI

Pigeonholing: Bad prompts hurt models to collapse and make mistakes

arXiv:2606. 24267v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: While in-context learning is generally shown to be effective in Large Language Models (LLMs), bad contexts can cause performance degradation and mode collapse, a phenomenon we call "pigeonholing.

Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 14

The Illusion of Robustness: Aggregate Accuracy Hides Prediction Flips under Task-Irrelevant Context

As large language models (LLMs) grow more capable, they are increasingly deployed in context-rich settings where task inputs are often accompanied by long, partially irrelevant context. In a controlled setting, we find that state-of-the-art models often appear robust to task-irrelevant context at the aggregate level: prepending it to benchmark questions causes little change in overall accuracy.

arXiv AI
3d ago

Don't Inoculate Everything: Stratified Inoculation Prompting Narrows Backdoor Triggers and Preserves Desired Traits

arXiv:2609.35356v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Supervised fine-tuning can teach language models undesired behaviours alongside desired ones. Inoculation prompting (IP) aims to limit unwanted gen...

By Kajetan Dymkiewicz, Tim Farrelly, Adam Prada, Ishaan Panigrahi, Srishti Gureja, Helen Yannakoudakis, Robert Mullins, Victor Gillioz, Daniel Tan, Maxime Rich\'e
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 16

Benchmarking Factual Robustness of LLMs via Multi-conversation Persuasion

The paper introduces the SAST-IR framework to evaluate large language models’ robustness against persuasion attacks in a memory‑less setting, revealing a flaw called "Refusal Inertia" that masks true vulnerability. Using the CP‑Agent and a custom CounterFact‑Strict dataset, the authors demonstrate that simple, diverse attack strategies achieve a 96% success rate, while complex attacks often trigger defensive compliance. The study highlights severe brittleness in current state‑of‑the‑art models when deprived of conversation history.

By Zhuoang Cai
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 24

Concept Concentration for Faithful Representation Intervention

arXiv:2505. 18672v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Representation intervention aims to localize and modify the representations that encode the underlying concepts in large language models (LLMs) to elicit the aligned and expected behaviors.

By Hongzheng Yang, Yongqiang Chen, Zeyu Qin, Tongliang Liu, Chaowei Xiao, Kun Zhang, Bo Han
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Validity-Aware Jailbreak Evaluation for Large Language Models

The paper introduces SEAV, a verification‑centric framework for evaluating jailbreak attempts against large language models. SEAV decomposes responses into ordered steps and checks both validity and correctness using LLM‑as‑a‑judge and retrieval‑grounded verification. The method reduces false positives by 14.9 percentage points on a strategic‑dishonesty diagnostic and reclassifies 22.1–51.0% of previously successful jailbreaks as invalid across multiple benchmarks.

By Qilong Wu, Sahil Wadhwa, Pranab Mohanty, Giri Iyengar, Varun Chandrasekaran
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

Understanding In-Context Multimodal Jailbreaks via Posterior Reweighting

The paper introduces a posterior reweighting framework to explain and counter in-context learning jailbreaks in multimodal large language models. It models the model as switching between safe and harmful behavioral modes, interpreting prompt demonstrations as evidence that shifts the posterior. Using this view, the authors derive scaling laws for jailbreak effectiveness and propose a defense that injects benign counter‑evidence to suppress harmful drift while maintaining utility.

By Xu Zhang, Dev Mistry, Xiang Xu, Ren Wang
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 11

Larger Context Window, Fewer Overcorrections: Optimizing Prompts and Batching for Minimal-Edit Grammatical Error Correction

The paper presents a prompt-based method for minimal-edit grammatical error correction (GEC) that reduces overcorrection in large language models (LLMs). It introduces taxonomy-based instructions, batch prompting to regularize overcorrection, and LLM-assisted prompt optimization, achieving an $F_{0.5}$ score of 78.32 on BEA-2019 with Gemini 3.1-Pro. This approach narrows the performance gap to fine-tuned models while avoiding their infrastructure demands.

By Kateryna Karpo, Artem Chernodub