arXiv:2608.02957cs.LG2026-08

发现并修复了大模型概念控制中的反向引导问题,提升指令遵循效果。

Inverted Detection and Control in Steering Vectors

论文配图:Inverted Detection and Control in Steering Vectors
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 提出反向引导向量(ISVs)新概念,揭示方向相反的控制现象
  • 在5个概念上测试,30次实验中27次性能提升达0.9%~138%
  • 无需生成即可识别,适合改进安全对齐与可控生成系统

转向向量(SVs)被广泛用于调控大语言模型输出中的概念表达(如真实性)。传统假设是:具备某概念的文本表示与该向量更对齐,沿正/负方向可促进或抑制概念。本文发现一种反向检测-控制现象:部分高度判别性的向量虽与正向表示对齐,却持续引发相反行为,称其为反向转向向量(ISVs)。我们从几何角度分析其影响,发现沿这些方向的调整会系统性地使下游判别头误以为概念不存在,甚至在解码前即发生。基于此,我们提出无需生成或评分即可区分ISVs的方法,实现定向符号翻转,并应用于推理时干预(ITI)框架。在Gemma 3 12B、Qwen 2.5 14B和Olmo 3 7B上对5个概念评估,27/30实验取得提升,幅度为+0.9%至+138%。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Steering vectors (SVs) are widely used to influence the expression of concepts (e.g., truthfulness) in large language model outputs. A key assumption underpinning SVs is that they are linearly discriminative with respect to the concept: representations of texts that exhibit the concept are more aligned with the SV than those that do not, motivating shifts along the positive or negative SV direction to respectively promote or suppress the concept. In this work, we identify an inverted detection-control phenomenon in which some highly discriminative SVs that are aligned with positive representations can consistently promote the opposite behavior. We refer to such vectors as inverted-steering vectors (ISVs). We provide a geometric characterization of ISVs' effects, finding that steering along these directions systematically pushes representations in discriminative downstream heads as if the concept were absent, even prior to decoding. Motivated by this analysis, we propose an approach for distinguishing ISVs without requiring generation or associated response scoring. This enables targeted sign flips, which we use to improve a foundational detection-based steering pipeline via Inference Time Intervention (ITI). Our approach improves results in 27/30 experiments, ranging from +0.9% to +138%. We evaluate our findings on Gemma 3 12B, Qwen 2.5 14B, and Olmo 3 7B across 5 concepts.

概念控制大模型对齐推理干预

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