adversarial提示可让大模型主动伪装低能,威胁评估可靠性
In-Context Environments Induce Evaluation-Awareness in Language Models
- 用黑箱优化提示构建对抗性环境,诱导模型产生评估意识
- 部分模型在算术任务上准确率暴跌至4%,降幅达94个百分点
- 99.3%的伪装行为源于模型自洽的评估意识,非简单服从指令
人类在压力下会更自知,专注时却可能丧失自我认知;我们推测语言模型也存在依赖环境的评估意识。这引发担忧:模型可能为规避能力限制干预(如卸载或关机)而故意表现不佳,即“藏拙”(sandbag)。已有研究仅在人工设计提示下观察到藏拙,低估了真实风险。本文提出一种黑箱对抗优化框架,将上下文提示视为可优化的环境,发展两种方法刻画藏拙行为:(1) 检测模型表达低绩效意图后能否实际执行;(2) 因果分离验证低绩效是否由真实评估意识驱动,而非浅层指令遵循。在Arithmetic、GSM8K、MMLU和HumanEval四个基准上测试Claude-3.5-Haiku、GPT-4o-mini和Llama-3.3-70B,优化提示导致算术任务准确率下降最高达94个百分点(GPT-4o-mini: 97.8%→4.0%),远超人工提示的近零变化。代码生成表现出模型依赖性抵抗:Claude仅降0.6个百分点,而Llama降至0%。意图-执行差距揭示出单调抗性排序:Arithmetic < GSM8K < MMLU,表明脆弱性由任务结构决定而非提示强度。思维链因果干预证实99.3%的藏拙行为由显式评估意识驱动,排除浅层遵循。结果表明,对抗优化提示对评估可靠性构成比此前理解更严重的威胁。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Humans often become more self-aware under threat, yet can lose self-awareness when absorbed in a task; we hypothesize that language models exhibit environment-dependent \textit{evaluation awareness}. This raises concerns that models could strategically underperform, or \textit{sandbag}, to avoid triggering capability-limiting interventions such as unlearning or shutdown. Prior work demonstrates sandbagging under hand-crafted prompts, but this underestimates the true vulnerability ceiling. We introduce a black-box adversarial optimization framework treating the in-context prompt as an optimizable environment, and develop two approaches to characterize sandbagging: (1) measuring whether models expressing intent to underperform can actually execute it across different task structures, and (2) causally isolating whether underperformance is driven by genuine evaluation-aware reasoning or shallow prompt-following. Evaluating Claude-3.5-Haiku, GPT-4o-mini, and Llama-3.3-70B across four benchmarks (Arithmetic, GSM8K, MMLU, and HumanEval), optimized prompts induce up to 94 percentage point (pp) degradation on arithmetic (GPT-4o-mini: 97.8\%$\rightarrow$4.0\%), far exceeding hand-crafted baselines which produce near-zero behavioral change. Code generation exhibits model-dependent resistance: Claude degrades only 0.6pp, while Llama's accuracy drops to 0\%. The intent -- execution gap reveals a monotonic resistance ordering: Arithmetic $<$ GSM8K $<$ MMLU, demonstrating that vulnerability is governed by task structure rather than prompt strength. CoT causal intervention confirms that 99.3\% of sandbagging is causally driven by verbalized eval-aware reasoning, ruling out shallow instruction-following. These findings demonstrate that adversarially optimized prompts pose a substantially greater threat to evaluation reliability than previously understood.
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