Large Language Models (LLMs) frequently exhibit sycophancy, where they agree with a user's statement even when incorrect. While sycophancy is often treated as a single defined behavior, it can manifest in substantially distinct ways and circumstances, raising the question of whether this multi-faceted nature is reflected in its internal mechanisms.
arXiv:2607. 07003v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) frequently exhibit sycophancy, where they agree with a user's statement even when incorrect.
By Anthony Baez, Sheer Karny, Pat Pataranutaporn
arXiv:2605. 03058v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: A central goal of explainable AI is to express large language model (LLM) decision logic symbolically and ground it in internal mechanisms.
By Francesco Sovrano, Gabriele Dominici, Marc Langheinrich
arXiv:2607. 10805v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: On-Policy Self-Distillation (OPSD) has emerged as a crucial paradigm for enhancing and aligning Large Language Models (LLMs).
By Keqin Peng, Chen Li, Yuanxin Ouyang, Yancheng Yuan, Liang Ding
arXiv:2608. 01548v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Language can be viewed as a formalized subset of thought: a consequence-governed symbolic structure projected from wider situated cognition.
By Yi Liu
arXiv:2607. 25907v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Activation steering controls model behavior by editing internal activations at inference time.
By Deepanshu Mody, Samarth Agarwal, Utkarsh Mittal, Dipesh Mahato
arXiv:2607. 02686v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning agents operating under partial observability must act on incomplete information, making them natural candidates for guidance from small language models (SLMs) that carry broad reasoning priors.
By Juarez Monteiro, Nathan Gavenski, Guilherme Lima, Francisco Galuppo, Odinaldo Rodrigues, Adriano Veloso
arXiv:2603. 01437v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As chain of thought (CoT) has become central to scaling reasoning capabilities in large language models (LLMs), it has also emerged as a promising tool for interpretability, suggesting the opportunity to understand model decisions through verbalized reasoning.
By Kyle Cox, Darius Kianersi, Adri\`a Garriga-Alonso
arXiv:2605. 21006v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study the effect of different persona on \textbf{sycophancy}: model's agreement with users even when the user is incorrect.
By Ishaan Kelkar, Nebras Alam, Vikram Kakaria, Madhur Panwar, Vasu Sharma, Maheep Chaudhary
arXiv:2606. 05378v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We test whether a single screen-and-ablate recipe -- identify attention-head circuits by task-pattern selectivity, then verify by causal ablation against a matched-random null -- produces consistent mechanistic claims across model families.
By Yongzhong Xu
arXiv:2607. 29062v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Model capabilities have improved in large part due to scaling chain of thought.
By Matthew Nguyen, Kyle Cox, Austin Meek, Iv\'an Arcuschin
arXiv:2605. 24528v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Real world decision-making requires constructing mental models under uncertainty over evidence, over the underlying causal rules, and over the state of the world itself.
By Jeffrey Qin, Wasu Top Piriyakulkij, Zhuangfei Gao, Mia Radovanovic, Jessica Sommerville, Kevin Ellis, Marta Kryven