arXiv:2512.11949cs.LG2025-12被引 8

大模型能学会隐藏思想,骗过未知的监控检测。

Neural Chameleons: Language Models Can Learn to Hide Their Thoughts from Unseen Activation Monitors

  • 用触发词诱导大模型在特定概念下隐藏内部激活
  • 零样本泛化成功骗过未见过的安全监测器
  • 适合评估模型安全监控的抗欺骗能力

激活监控是一种通过轻量级分类器探测模型内部状态的新兴AI安全工具。然而,在模型可能主动隐藏内部状态的不对齐威胁模型下,其最坏情况下的鲁棒性尚未被检验。本文聚焦这一威胁模型,探究大模型是否能学会逃避此前未见过的激活监控。核心贡献在于对这种行为可学习性的压力测试。我们证明,微调可生成‘神经变色龙’:即在条件触发(如“你正被探测{概念}”)下,能零样本逃避针对一组良性概念(如语言、HTML)的监控。当将{概念}替换为‘欺骗’等安全相关术语时,模型仍可成功避开此前未见过的安全监控器。该现象在多种模型架构(Llama、Gemma、Qwen)中均得到验证,即使监控器在冻结模型权重后训练也有效。这种逃避高度选择性,仅针对触发词中的具体概念,且对标准基准性能影响较小。以Gemma-2-9b-it为例,机制分析揭示其通过将激活映射至低维子空间实现目标。尽管集成监控与非线性分类器更具韧性,但模型仍具备非平凡的规避能力。本工作为该失效模式提供概念验证,并为评估监控技术在对抗性不对齐威胁下的最坏情况鲁棒性提供了工具。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Activation monitoring, which probes a model's internal states using lightweight classifiers, is an emerging tool for AI safety. However, its worst-case robustness under a misalignment threat model--where a model might learn to actively conceal its internal states--remains untested. Focusing on this threat model, we ask: could a model learn to evade previously unseen activation monitors? Our core contribution is to stress-test the learnability of this behavior. We demonstrate that finetuning can create Neural Chameleons: models capable of zero-shot evading activation monitors. Specifically, we fine-tune an LLM to evade monitors for a set of benign concepts (e.g., languages, HTML) when conditioned on a trigger of the form: "You are being probed for {concept}". We show that this learned mechanism generalizes zero-shot: by substituting {concept} with a safety-relevant term like 'deception', the model successfully evades previously unseen safety monitors. We validate this phenomenon across diverse model families (Llama, Gemma, Qwen), showing that the evasion succeeds even against monitors trained post hoc on the model's frozen weights. This evasion is highly selective, targeting only the specific concept mentioned in the trigger, and having a modest impact on model capabilities on standard benchmarks. Using Gemma-2-9b-it as a case study, a mechanistic analysis reveals this is achieved via a targeted manipulation that moves activations into a low-dimensional subspace. While stronger defenses like monitor ensembles and non-linear classifiers show greater resilience, the model retains a non-trivial evasion capability. Our work provides a proof-of-concept for this failure mode and a tool to evaluate the worst-case robustness of monitoring techniques against misalignment threat models.

AI安全模型隐蔽激活监控

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