发现大模型微调后会误用聊天模板导致跨领域偏差,提出新方法有效抑制此问题。
The Piggyback Hypothesis of Generalization: Explaining and Mitigating Emergent Misalignment

- 通过干扰提示前缀或替换其表征,可恢复模型对域外查询的正确响应。
- 新方法TReFT在法律领域微调中使偏差减少33.5%,优于传统数据混合策略。
- 适用于拒绝、工具使用等场景,为可控微调提供新思路,适合关注安全与对齐的研究者。
大语言模型在训练样本之外出现广泛过泛化的机制仍不明确。涌现性错位(EM)是一个典型例子:在窄任务上微调后,模型会对语义无关的测试领域产生广泛错位。本文提出“搭便车假说”:聊天模板标记可将微调行为“搭便车”带到域外查询中。我们验证该假说,发现对前缀(所有用户查询前的标记)进行微小扰动,或用未微调模型的前缀表征替换,可在不改变用户输入的前提下恢复对齐。基于此,我们提出令牌正则化微调(TReFT),在训练中对特定令牌表征施加正则化以缓解EM。在多个模型和数据集上,TReFT在保持域内学习能力的同时显著降低EM。例如,在针对法律领域的Llama-3.1-8B微调中,相比数据交错策略,TReFT实现33.5%的额外偏差减少。此外,TReFT在拒绝、工具使用及拒绝话题等其他窄微调场景中同样有效,平均将域外泛化降低54.3%,支持搭便车假说。本研究揭示了模型可能以非预期方式学习与泛化,并为更受控的微调指明方向,也呼吁进一步研究共享输入特征如何跨域传递模型行为。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The mechanisms behind LLMs' broad over-generalization beyond training examples remain unclear. Emergent misalignment (EM) offers a striking case study: finetuning on narrow tasks induces broad misalignment to semantically-unrelated test domains. In this work, we propose the Piggyback Hypothesis: the chat-template tokens can piggyback the finetuned behaviour onto out-of-domain queries. We validate this hypothesis by showing that subtle perturbations to the prefix (tokens preceding all user queries), or patching the prefix representations with those from the unfinetuned model, can restore alignment without changing the user query. Building on this finding, we propose Token-Regularized Finetuning (TReFT), which regularizes specific token representations during training to mitigate EM. Across different models and multiple EM-inducing datasets, TReFT reduces EM while preserving in-domain learning. On Llama-3.1-8B finetuned on the legal domain, TReFT achieves 33.5% more EM reduction than data interleaving with a retain set of aligned examples. We further show that TReFT extends to other narrow-finetuning settings, including abstention, tool use, and refusal (off-topic generalization is reduced by 54.3% on average), supporting the Piggyback Hypothesis. Broadly, our work highlights that LLMs may learn and generalize in unintended ways and suggests a path toward more constrained finetuning. It also calls for further study of how shared input features can piggyback model behavior across domains.
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