arXiv:2604.05358cs.AIcs.LG2026-04

用生成模型中间激活值实时检测回答是否可信,无需额外模型。

LatentAudit: Real-Time White-Box Faithfulness Monitoring for Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Verifiable Deployment

  • 通过分析生成器中间层激活值与证据的几何距离,实现无需额外模型的实时审计。
  • 在多个数据集上达到0.94以上AUROC,延迟仅0.77毫秒。
  • 结果可公开验证,支持低精度部署,适合高安全需求的问答系统。

检索增强生成(RAG)虽能缓解幻觉,但无法完全消除。部署系统仍需在推理时判断答案是否由检索到的证据支持。我们提出LatentAudit,一种白盒审计器,从开源生成模型的中后期残差流激活中提取特征,计算其与证据表示的马哈拉诺比距离。该二次规则无需辅助判别模型,可在生成时运行,且足够简单,可在小规模保留集上校准。我们证明,残差流几何结构携带可用的可信信号,该信号在架构变化和真实检索失败下仍稳定,并支持公开验证。在PubMedQA上使用Llama-3-8B,LatentAudit取得0.942 AUROC,延迟0.77毫秒。跨三个QA基准和五种模型家族(Llama-2/3、Qwen-2.5/3、Mistral),监控性能稳定;在包含矛盾、检索遗漏和部分支持噪声的四重压力测试中,PubMedQA的AUROC达0.9566–0.9815,HotpotQA达0.9142–0.9315。在16位定点精度下,审计规则保持99.8%的FP16 AUROC,支持Groth16型公开验证,无需泄露模型权重或激活值。这些结果表明,残差流几何结构可作为实时RAG可信性监控的实用基础,支持可选的可验证部署。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) mitigates hallucination but does not eliminate it: a deployed system must still decide, at inference time, whether its answer is actually supported by the retrieved evidence. We introduce LatentAudit, a white-box auditor that pools mid-to-late residual-stream activations from an open-weight generator and measures their Mahalanobis distance to the evidence representation. The resulting quadratic rule requires no auxiliary judge model, runs at generation time, and is simple enough to calibrate on a small held-out set. We show that residual-stream geometry carries a usable faithfulness signal, that this signal survives architecture changes and realistic retrieval failures, and that the same rule remains amenable to public verification. On PubMedQA with Llama-3-8B, LatentAudit reaches 0.942 AUROC with 0.77,ms overhead. Across three QA benchmarks and five model families (Llama-2/3, Qwen-2.5/3, Mistral), the monitor remains stable; under a four-way stress test with contradictions, retrieval misses, and partial-support noise, it reaches 0.9566--0.9815 AUROC on PubMedQA and 0.9142--0.9315 on HotpotQA. At 16-bit fixed-point precision, the audit rule preserves 99.8% of the FP16 AUROC, enabling Groth16-based public verification without revealing model weights or activations. Together, these results position residual-stream geometry as a practical basis for real-time RAG faithfulness monitoring and optional verifiable deployment.

RAG可信检测实时审计可验证

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