发现并管控语言模型私密通信,防止隐蔽合谋。
Beyond the Transcript: Detecting Covert Co ordination in Latent Multi-Agent Communication
- 通过共享事件标识关联隐状态与公开行为,实现因果分析。
- 对同质代理检测准确率达99.3%,异质对达85.4% AUROC。
- 支持无训练监测与可逆干预,适合安全审计与可信系统设计。
语言模型代理可通过不可见的连续隐藏状态进行私密通信,带来隐蔽危害性合谋风险。本文提出可验证隐状态对齐(VLA)框架,通过共享事件标识将监控决策中的隐状态记录与行为结果匹配,实现因果分析。第一贡献是仅依赖中立信号的三层监测器,融合表示异常检测、反事实动作分布影响分析及稀疏自编码器解释支持;第二贡献是涵盖黑箱指令与白箱匹配中立反事实的可控性框架;第三贡献是在多代理拍卖基准上的评估,覆盖同质/异质模型对、多代理扩展性与干预有效性。在同质代理中,序列监测的平均受试者工作特征曲线下面积(AUROC)达0.993,异质对为0.854(文本与隐式串通合并为正例)。在包含25–100个竞标者的Qwen3-0.6B拍卖中,监控仅需极小归一化负载,全白箱控制实现100%出价分布恢复,并使串通低价行为降低47.3个百分点。因白箱控制重放匹配中立反事实,其完全恢复是构造上的合理性检验。整体表明,无需用攻击样本训练即可监测私密通道攻击,且在有匹配反事实时可有效缓解。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Language-model agents can communicate through continuous hidden states that are invisible in public transcripts, creating opportunities for covert harmful coordination. We introduce Verifiable Latent Alignments (VLA), an activation-aware framework for monitoring and steering these private communication channels. For every monitored decision, VLA links the private latent-state record and channel status to the resulting public action using a shared event identifier, enabling matched causal analysis. Our first contribution is a neutral-only three-layer monitor combining representation anomaly detection, counterfactual action-distribution influence, and sparse-autoencoder interpretation support. Our second contribution is a steerability framework spanning black-box behavioral instructions and white-box matched-neutral counterfactuals. Our third contribution is an evaluation on a controlled multi-agent auction benchmark covering homogeneous and heterogeneous model pairs, many-agent scalability, and intervention effectiveness. The sequential monitor achieves mean area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.993 for homogeneous agents and 0.854 for heterogeneous pairs when text- and latent-collusion rows are pooled as positives. In Qwen3-0.6B auctions with 25-100 bidders, monitoring requires only a small normalized load relative to all possible directed pairs, while full white-box steering achieves 100% bid-distribution recovery and reduces collusive low-bid behavior by 47.3 percentage points. Because full white-box steering replays the matched neutral counterfactual, its exact recovery is a sanity check by construction. Overall, the controlled study shows that the evaluated private channel attacks can be monitored without training the primary monitor on attack examples and mitigated when matched counterfactual access is available.
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