arXiv Computation and Language By Jiwon Moon, Yerin Hwang, Kyomin Jung

Language Shapes Instruction Hierarchy Compliance in Multilingual LLMs

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The paper introduces XIH-Bench, a multilingual benchmark for evaluating instruction hierarchy (IH) compliance in large language models across six languages, four domains, and three IH settings. It finds that IH compliance varies with language, showing an asymmetry where a language can strengthen compliance in a higher-priority role but disrupt it in a lower-priority role, and that cross-language conflicts yield higher compliance than same-language conflicts—a phenomenon called the Language Boundary Effect. The study also highlights that language specialization can make lower-priority instructions in favored languages harder to override, raising potential reliability and security concerns.

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