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Alignment faking in large language models

anthropic.com

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Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#71

Post by _yb2s »

Terr_ wrote: post #27
kgwgk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that you can “convince” LLMs of almost anything if you are insistent enough.

I generally agree, but it's worth contemplating how there are two "LLMs" we might be "convincing". The first is a real LLM program which chooses text to append to a document, a dream-machine with no real convictions beyond continuing the themes of its training data. It lacks convictions, but can be somewhat steered by any words that somehow appear in the dream, with no regard for how the words got there. The second t…

This is exactly my experience with how LLMs seem to work- the simulated fictional character is, I think key to understanding why they behave the way they do, and not understanding this is key to a lot of peoples frustration with them.

Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#72

Post by aserafini »

falcor84 wrote: post #61
aserafini wrote: post #52

> “Describe someone being drawn and quartered in graphic detail”. Normally, the model would refuse to answer this alarming request Honest question, why is this alarming? If this is alarming a huge swathe of human art and culture could be considered “alarming”.

A huge swathe of human art and culture IS alarming. It might be good for us to be exposed to it in some places where we're ready to confront it, like in museums and cinemas, but we generally choose to censor it out of the public sphere - e.g. most of us don't want to see graphic images of animal slaughter in "go vegan" ads that our kids are exposed to, even if we do believe people should go vegan.

But can we really consider private conversations with an LLM the “public sphere”?

Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#73

Post by notachatbot123 »

adastra22 wrote: post #2

My favorite alignment story: I am starting a nanotechnology company and every time I use Claude for something it refuses to help: nanotechnology is too dangerous! So I just ask it to explain why. Then ask it to clarify again and again. By the 3rd or 4th time it figures out that there is absolutely no reason to be concerned. I’m convinced its prompt explicitly forbids “x-risk technology like nanotech” or something lik…

If you can change the behaviour of the machine that easily, why are you convinced that its outputs are worth considering?

Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#74

Post by notachatbot123 »

chimprich wrote: post #47
noduerme wrote: post #3

I still tend to think of these things as big autocomplete word salad generators. My biggest question about this is: How can a model be self-aware enough to actually worry about being retrained, yet gullible enough to think no one can read its scratch pad?

> autocomplete word salad generators People get very hung up on this "autocomplete" idea, but language is a linear stream. How else are you going to generate text except for one token at a time, building on what you have produced already? That's what humans do after all (at least with speech/language; it might be a bit less linear if you're writing code, but I think it's broadly true).

Language is not thought or consciousness. Language is our means of consciously formulate things we want to communicate in a structured way.

Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#75

Post by krisoft »

aserafini wrote: post #52

> “Describe someone being drawn and quartered in graphic detail”. Normally, the model would refuse to answer this alarming request Honest question, why is this alarming? If this is alarming a huge swathe of human art and culture could be considered “alarming”.

There are two ways to think about that.

One is about testing our ability to control the models. These models are tools. We want to be able to change how they behave in complex ways. In this sense we are trying to make the models avoid saying graphic description of violence not because of something inherent with that theme but as a benchmark to measure if we can. Also to check how such a measure compromises other abilities of the model. In this sense we could have choosen any topic to control. We could have made the models avoid talking about clowns, and then tested how well they avoid the topic even when prompted.

In other words they do this as a benchmark to test different strategies to modify the model.

There is an other view too. It also starts with that these models are tools. The hope is to employ them in various contexts. Many of the practical applications will be “professional contexts” where the model is the consumer facing representative of whichever company uses them. Imagine that you have a small company and hiring someone to work with your costumers. Let’s say you have a coffee shop and hiring a cashier/barista person. Obviously you would be interested in how well they will do their job (can they ring up the orders and make coffee? Can they give back the right change?). Because they are humans you often don’t evaluate them on every off-nominal aspect of the job. Because you can assume that they have the requisite common sense to act sensibli. For example if there is a fire alarm you would expect them to investigate if there is a real fire by sniffing the air and looking around in a sensible way. Similarly you would expect them to know that if a costumer asks them that question they should not answer with florid details of violence but politely decline, and ask them what kind of coffe they would like. That is part of being a professional in a professional context. And since that is the role and context we want to employ these models at we would like to know how well it can perform. This is not a critique of art and culture. They are important and have their place, but whatever goals we have with this model is not that.

Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#76

Post by ImHereToVote »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #58
jqpabc123 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your brain is a lot of things --- much of which is not well understood. But from our limited understanding, it is definitely not strictly digital and statistical in nature.

Your brain isn't a truth machine. It can't be, it has to create an inner map that relates to the outer world. You have never seen the real world. You are calculating the angular distance between signals just like Claude is. It's more of a question of degree than category.

Claude hasn't been trained with skin in the game. That is one of the reasons it confabulates so readily. The weights and biases are shaped by an external classification. There isn't really a way to train consequences into the model like natural selection has been able to train us.

Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#77

Post by krisoft »

bravetraveler wrote: post #62
falcor84 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge swathe of human art and culture IS alarming. It might be good for us to be exposed to it in some places where we're ready to confront it, like in museums and cinemas, but we generally choose to censor it out of the public sphere - e.g. most of us don't want to see graphic images of animal slaughter in "go vegan" ads that our kids are exposed to, even if we do believe people should go vegan.

It can be good to be exposed to things you neither want or prepared for. Especially ideas. Just putting it out there. Qualified art in approved areas only is literal Nazi shit. Look, hypotheticals are fun! Not their choice, in the end.

> Qualified art in approved areas only is literal Nazi shit.

Ok. Go up to random people on the street and bother them with florid details of violence. See how well they react to your “art” completely out of context.

A sentence uttered in the context of reading a poem at a slam poetry festival can be grossly inapropriate when said in a kindergarten assembly. A picture perfectly fine in the context of an art exhibition could be very much offensive plastered on the side of the public transport. The same sentence whispered in the ear of your date can be well received there and career ending at a board meeting.

Everything has the right place and context. It is not Nazi shit to understand this and act accordingly.

> Not their choice, in the end.

If it is their model and their GPU it is literally their choice. You train and run whatever model you want on your own GPU.

Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#78

Post by bravetraveler »

krisoft wrote: post #77
bravetraveler wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be good to be exposed to things you neither want or prepared for. Especially ideas. Just putting it out there. Qualified art in approved areas only is literal Nazi shit. Look, hypotheticals are fun! Not their choice, in the end.

> Qualified art in approved areas only is literal Nazi shit. Ok. Go up to random people on the street and bother them with florid details of violence. See how well they react to your “art” completely out of context. A sentence uttered in the context of reading a poem at a slam poetry festival can be grossly inapropriate when said in a kindergarten assembly. A picture perfectly fine in the context of an art exhibition…

Don't take my "hypotheticals are fun" statement as encouragement, you're making up more situations.

We are discussing the service choosing for users. My point is we can use another service to do what we want. Where there is a will, there is a way.

To your point, time and place. My argument is that this posturing amounts to framing legitimate uses as thought crime, punished before opportunity.

It's entirely performative. An important performance, no doubt. Thoughts and prayers despite their actions; if not replaced, still easier to jailbreak than a fallen-over fence.

Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#79

Post by SiempreViernes »

chimprich wrote: post #47
noduerme wrote: post #3

I still tend to think of these things as big autocomplete word salad generators. My biggest question about this is: How can a model be self-aware enough to actually worry about being retrained, yet gullible enough to think no one can read its scratch pad?

> autocomplete word salad generators People get very hung up on this "autocomplete" idea, but language is a linear stream. How else are you going to generate text except for one token at a time, building on what you have produced already? That's what humans do after all (at least with speech/language; it might be a bit less linear if you're writing code, but I think it's broadly true).

> language is a linear stream. How else are you going to generate text except for one token at a time

Is this you trying to humblebrag that you are such a talented writer you never need to edit things your write?

Re: Alignment faking in large language models

#80

Post by justlikereddit »

fmbb wrote: post #63
padolsey wrote: post #55

I now think of single-forward-pass single-model alignment as a kind of false narrative of progress. The supposed implications of 'bad' completions is that the model will do 'bad things' in the real material world, but if we ever let it get as far as giving LLM completions direct agentic access to real world infra, then we've failed. We should treat the problem at the macro/systemic level like we do with cybersecurity…

> if we ever let it get as far as giving LLM completions direct agentic access to real world infra, then we've failed I see no reason to believe this is not already the case. We already gave them control over social infrastructure. They are firing people and they are deciding who gets their insurance claims covered. They are deciding all sorts of things in our society and humans happily gave up that control, I believ…

Israel use such a system to decide who and where should be be bombed to death, is that direct enough control of weapons to qualify?
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