arXiv AI
From Refusal Tokens to Refusal Control: Discovering and Steering Category-Specific Refusal Directions
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arXiv AI
Jul 1
The Geometry of Refusal: Linear Instability in Safety-Aligned LLMs
arXiv:2606. 22686v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Modern Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on extensive safety alignment, yet the mechanistic basis of refusal remains opaque.
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 4
Expert-Aware Refusal Steering
arXiv:2606. 04160v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Safety alignment in instruction-tuned large language models (LLMs) depends on a model's ability to reliably refuse to respond to harmful or disallowed requests.
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 4
Beyond Shallow Alignment: How Post-Training Methods Determine Refusal Circuits And Steering Robustness
The paper investigates how different post‑training methods—supervised fine‑tuning, reasoning‑augmented fine‑tuning, and preference optimization (ORPO)—affect the internal computation of refusal behavior in language models. Experiments on Llama‑3.1‑8B, Gemma‑2‑9B, and Qwen3‑8B show that reasoning‑augmented training consistently creates a distinct refusal computation across models, while the architecture influences the internal structure and steerability of refusal. None of the studied methods simultaneously achieve a distributed refusal mechanism, preserve general capability, and allow easy corrective edits, indicating that current post‑training approaches are not a fully reliable defense for safety-critical applications.
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27
Refusal geometry reflects refusal training: diverse refusal prefixes can raise stable rank and weaken refusal vector ablation attacks
The paper investigates how refusal training shapes the internal geometry of language models, showing that activation updates from refusal-completion losses create a distinct low‑dimensional refusal subspace. In a case study on OLMo‑2‑0425‑1B‑Instruct, the authors link the brittleness of refusal directions to repetitive refusal prefixes and demonstrate that using diverse refusal starts can increase the stable rank of gradients, thereby hardening the model against vector‑ablation attacks. The work provides insights into the emergence of safety‑critical features and offers a potential strategy to strengthen refusal robustness.
arXiv AI
2d ago
Skin-Deep: A Geometric Diagnostic for Alignment Fragility in Large Language Model Representations
arXiv:2606.22676v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Refusal on a safety benchmark does not reveal how stable that behavior will remain after model updates. Benign downstream fine-tuning can weaken re...
arXiv AI
Aug 24
RefusalGuard: Geometry-Preserving Fine-Tuning for Safety in LLMs
arXiv:2605.01913v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Fine-tuning safety-aligned language models for downstream tasks often leads to substantial degradation of refusal behavior, making models vul...