arXiv AI

A Geometric Account of Activation Steering through Angle-Norm Decomposition

arXiv:2606. 06735v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Linear activation steering has gained popularity as a simple and empirically effective way to control language model behavior.

arXiv AI
Sep 10

Steering Geometry: Validating Human Value Geometry in LLM Steering Space

arXiv:2609.06289v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in alignment-sensitive contexts, activation steering has emerged as a lightweight, inferenc...

By Mohammad Mahdi Abootorabi, Armin Saghafian, Ali Bazshoushtari, Hamid Rezaei, EunJeong Hwang, Vered Shwartz, Parvin Mousavi, Purang Abolmaesumi
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

The information geometry of large language models is shared, learned, and controllable

The paper investigates how large language models (LLMs) share a common Fisher‑Rao geometry in their next‑token probability distributions, revealing that behaviour largely determines this geometry while activation geometry depends on coordinate choices. Across transformer, state‑space, and recurrent architectures, output geometries align more closely than activation geometries, and this shared structure facilitates semantic‑category transfer and improves agreement with human word choices as models scale and train. The study further demonstrates that geometry can guide minimum‑disturbance interventions, enabling reusable control that preserves behaviour better than Euclidean methods and enhances steering, editing, attribution, dictionary learning, and fine‑tuning.

By Dario Picozzi
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

GEOSTEER: Geodesic Optimization for Activation Steering in Large Language Models

GeoSteer introduces a geometry-aware, optimization-based approach to norm-preserving activation steering in large language models. By formulating steering as a Riemannian optimization problem, it updates activations through a sequence of small geodesic steps guided by a learned nonlinear objective, avoiding fixed steering directions. Experiments on TruthfulQA, RealToxicityPrompts, and UltraFeedback show that GeoSteer consistently outperforms existing activation steering baselines, offering smoother, more stable, and more consistent steering behavior.

By Xuan Cuong Ngo, Hao Vo, Ngan Le
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 9

Towards Understanding Steering Strength

arXiv:2602. 02712v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A popular approach to post-training control of large language models (LLMs) is the steering of intermediate latent representations.

By Magamed Taimeskhanov, Samuel Vaiter, Damien Garreau