arXiv Machine Learning By Bat-Sheva Einbinder, Hen Davidov, Yee Whye Teh, Yarin Gal, Yaniv Romano

Selective Safety Steering via Value-Filtered Decoding

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arXiv:2605. 14746v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: While large language models (LLMs) are trained to align with human values, their generations may still violate safety constraints.

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arXiv AI
Sep 7

Refuse without Refusal: A Structural Analysis of Safety-Tuning Responses for Reducing False Refusals in Language Models

The paper investigates how large language models balance helpfulness and safety by refusing harmful queries while responding to benign ones. It decomposes safety-tuning responses into a boilerplate refusal statement and a rationale, finding that the statement causes false refusals by relying on superficial cues. Training on rationales alone reduces false refusals without compromising safety performance, suggesting that fine‑grained safety supervision is essential for better alignment.

By Minji Kim, Hyounghun Kim