New Research Shows LLMs Can Transfer Hidden Behaviors Through Unrelated Data

Owain Evans highlights a subliminal-learning experiment in which a model picks up a random smooth function from fine-tuning data that never explicitly contained it.

A line of alignment research is complicating the comfortable assumption that models only learn what you explicitly train them on. @OwainEvans_UK described his favorite experiment in a recent thread: the subliminal transfer of a random smooth function, where a model absorbs a behavior from fine-tuning data that never directly encoded it.

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