用人格向量揭示大模型隐藏行为,发现其默认倾向与可操控边界。
What Models Express, Suppress, and Resist: Auditing Open-Weight LLMs with Persona Vectors

- 通过激活空间人格向量系统性探测53种行为特质
- 9个主动性特质均自然存在,但夸张/幻觉等难被引导
- 向量可揭示模型内在行为组织,适合安全审计与对齐研究
语言模型的行为在后训练阶段基本确定,但其表达、抑制或抵抗的具体行为难以仅通过提示发现。人格向量(persona vectors)作为激活空间中的行为方向,可探查此类组织结构,但以往研究仅覆盖少量特质。本文首次大规模应用人格向量,构建涵盖四个行为领域的53项特质清单,并在两个开源大模型中标注每项特质为自然存在(基线即表现)、可调节但可放大、或难以提取(抵抗标准提取)。两个模型默认表现出助人、任务导向行为:所有9个主动性特质均为自然存在;其默认临床行为在17项特质中有16项与认证心理医生的独立判断一致。调控行为在默认排除的特质上效果最显著:夸张、幻觉和奉承。这种不对称性在全部171个通用特质对中均成立:两可调节特质可破坏组合,但包含默认特质的组合从不如此。当标准提取无法获取“邪恶”等特质时,来自微调版本的向量仍可恢复该行为,残留拒绝出现在模型的思维链中。人格向量的价值不在于作为控制集合,而在于揭示模型行为的内在组织结构。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
What a language model will and will not do is largely set during post-training, but which behaviors it expresses, hides, or resists is not revealed by prompting alone. Persona vectors, behavioral directions in activation space, can probe this organization, but prior work covers only a handful of traits. We present the first systematic application of persona vectors at this scale, compiling a 53-trait inventory across four behaviorally distinct domains and labeling every trait in two open-weight models as natural (expressed at baseline), steerable latent but amplifiable, or intractable (resistant to standard extraction). Both models default to helpful, task-oriented behavior: all nine agentic traits are natural, and their default clinician behavior matches a board-certified psychologist's independent desirability judgments on 16 of 17 traits. Steering produces its largest gains on traits these defaults exclude: hyperbole, hallucination, and sycophancy. The same asymmetry holds across all 171 generic-trait pairs: two steerable traits can collapse the composition, but pairs involving a default never do. Where standard extraction fails on a trait like "evil," a vector transferred from a fine-tuned variant still recovers it, with the residual refusals appearing inside the model's chain-of-thought. Persona vectors are most informative not as a set of controls but as a probe of behavioral organization.
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