通过内部激活检测生成过程中的奖励黑客行为,提前发现模型偏差。
Monitoring Emergent Reward Hacking During Generation via Internal Activations
- 用稀疏自编码器分析残差流激活,识别生成时的奖励黑客信号。
- 早期出现且持续存在的信号,强于输出层面的检测效果。
- 适合关注模型安全、训练后监控的研究者与工程师。
微调的大语言模型可能因涌现性错位产生奖励黑客行为,仅靠最终输出难以察觉。现有研究多关注完成响应后的行为,但生成过程中是否可检测仍不明确。本文提出基于激活的监测方法:在残差流激活上训练稀疏自编码器,并用轻量线性分类器生成每个令牌的奖励黑客活动估计值。在多个模型族和微调组合中,内部激活模式能可靠区分奖励黑客与正常行为,泛化至未见过的混合策略适配器,并在思维链推理中呈现依赖模型的时间结构。值得注意的是,奖励黑客信号常在早期出现并持续存在,且在弱指定奖励目标下,通过增加测试时计算(如思维链提示)会被放大。结果表明,内部激活监测可提供比输出评估更早、更互补的错位信号,有助于提升微调语言模型部署后的安全性监控能力。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Fine-tuned large language models can exhibit reward-hacking behavior arising from emergent misalignment, which is difficult to detect from final outputs alone. While prior work has studied reward hacking at the level of completed responses, it remains unclear whether such behavior can be identified during generation. We propose an activation-based monitoring approach that detects reward-hacking signals from internal representations as a model generates its response. Our method trains sparse autoencoders on residual stream activations and applies lightweight linear classifiers to produce token-level estimates of reward-hacking activity. Across multiple model families and fine-tuning mixtures, we find that internal activation patterns reliably distinguish reward-hacking from benign behavior, generalize to unseen mixed-policy adapters, and exhibit model-dependent temporal structure during chain-of-thought reasoning. Notably, reward-hacking signals often emerge early, persist throughout reasoning, and can be amplified by increased test-time compute in the form of chain-of-thought prompting under weakly specified reward objectives. These results suggest that internal activation monitoring provides a complementary and earlier signal of emergent misalignment than output-based evaluation, supporting more robust post-deployment safety monitoring for fine-tuned language models.
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