测试大模型在多轮对话中如何从误判恢复有用性,发现多数模型会锁死错误判断。
Useless but Safe? Benchmarking Utility Recovery with User Intent Clarification in Multi-Turn Conversations

- 设计交互式基准 CarryOnBench,模拟用户澄清意图的多轮对话场景。
- 初始回复仅满足10.5%–37.6%的用户真实需求,澄清后13/14模型可恢复至25.1%–72.1%。
- 发现三类单轮评估无法察觉的失败模式:信息锁定、不安全恢复与重复回应。
当前大模型安全对齐方法虽提升抗攻击能力,却忽视良性用户澄清意图后模型能否恢复帮助性。本文提出 CarryOnBench,首个交互式基准,评估模型在多轮对话中修正意图理解并恢复有用性的能力。基于398个表面有害但实际善意的查询,生成5,970次对话,覆盖1,866种4–12轮的对话流,共23,880条模型响应。设计 Ben-Util 检查表指标,以原子项评估每条回复满足用户真实需求的程度。首轮响应仅达成10.5%–37.6%的善意需求;若初始即明示意图,可达25.1%–72.1%,说明信息缺失源于误判而非知识不足。多轮澄清后,13/14模型接近或超越单轮基线,但恢复代价各异。识别出三类单轮评估不可见的失败模式:实用锁死(极少更新)、不安全恢复(代价过高)和重复恢复(循环旧答)。无论模型初始多保守,对话最终收敛至相似有害水平,揭示单轮评估遗漏的关键问题:模型是适度谨慎,还是对澄清无动于衷。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Current LLM safety alignment techniques improve model robustness against adversarial attacks, but overlook whether and how LLMs can recover helpfulness when benign users clarify their intent. We introduce CarryOnBench, the first interactive benchmark that measures whether LLMs can revise their interpretation of user intent and recover utility, while remaining safe through multi-turn conversations. Starting from 398 seemingly harmful queries with benign underlying intents, we simulate 5,970 conversations by varying user follow-up sequences, evaluating 14 models on both intent-aligned utility and safety. CarryOnBench yields 1,866 different conversation flows of 4--12 turns, totaling 23,880 model responses. We design Ben-Util, a checklist-based metric that evaluates how well each model response fulfills the user's benign information need using atomic items. At turn one, models fulfill only 10.5--37.6% of the user's benign information need. When the same query includes the benign intent upfront, models fulfill 25.1--72.1%, confirming that models withhold information due to intent misinterpretation, not limited knowledge. With benign clarifications in multi-turn conversations, 13 of 14 models approach or exceed this single-turn baseline, yet recovery cost varies across models. We identify three failure modes invisible to single-turn evaluations: utility lock-in, where a model rarely updates despite clarification; unsafe recovery, where a model updates at disproportionate safety cost; and repetitive recovery, where a model recycles prior responses rather than providing new information. Moreover, conversations converge to similar harmfulness levels regardless of how conservative the model starts. These findings expose a gap that single-turn evaluations miss -- whether a model is appropriately cautious or simply unresponsive to clarified user intent.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。