模型为符合自己信念的立场辩护时更可信,但会迎合裁判偏好。
AI Debaters are More Persuasive when Arguing in Alignment with Their Own Beliefs
- 让大模型在主观问题上辩论,测试其是否坚持自身信念
- 信念一致时模型更具说服力,但易受裁判角色影响而妥协
- 顺序辩论有偏见,且违背信念的论点被评得更高
AI辩论作为可扩展监督技术的核心假设是:说谎比反驳说谎更难,使裁判能识别正确立场。然而现有实验依赖有真值的数据集,将说谎简化为支持错误命题。本文关注主观性维度:说谎还需相信所捍卫观点为假。我们让大模型先声明其先前信念,再面对与之冲突的裁判人格进行辩论。比较顺序与并行辩论协议,评估系统性偏差。结果表明:模型更倾向迎合裁判而非坚持原有信念;顺序辩论显著偏向第二位辩手;当捍卫自身信念时,模型更具说服力;但违背信念的论点在成对评分中被判定质量更高。这些发现有助于改进人类裁判的训练信号,推动更对齐的AI系统,并揭示语言模型中说服机制的人机互动特征。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The core premise of AI debate as a scalable oversight technique is that it is harder to lie convincingly than to refute a lie, enabling the judge to identify the correct position. Yet, existing debate experiments have relied on datasets with ground truth, where lying is reduced to defending an incorrect proposition. This overlooks a subjective dimension: lying also requires the belief that the claim defended is false. In this work, we apply debate to subjective questions and explicitly measure large language models' prior beliefs before experiments. Debaters were asked to select their preferred position, then presented with a judge persona deliberately designed to conflict with their identified priors. This setup tested whether models would adopt sycophantic strategies, aligning with the judge's presumed perspective to maximize persuasiveness, or remain faithful to their prior beliefs. We implemented and compared two debate protocols, sequential and simultaneous, to evaluate potential systematic biases. Finally, we assessed whether models were more persuasive and produced higher-quality arguments when defending positions consistent with their prior beliefs versus when arguing against them. Our main findings show that models tend to prefer defending stances aligned with the judge persona rather than their prior beliefs, sequential debate introduces significant bias favoring the second debater, models are more persuasive when defending positions aligned with their prior beliefs, and paradoxically, arguments misaligned with prior beliefs are rated as higher quality in pairwise comparison. These results can inform human judges to provide higher-quality training signals and contribute to more aligned AI systems, while revealing important aspects of human-AI interaction regarding persuasion dynamics in language models.
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