Papers

PEARL 方法抑制语言模型不良行为,训练后不易复发

Suppressing Misaligned Behaviors in Language Models, Durably

Why we picked it

研究者把模型“越训越坏”的问题做成了可测量的框架,还给出 PEARL 这个 GRPO 改进版,做对齐或安全微调的可以看看怎么压制不良行为不反弹。

这篇 arXiv 论文构造了两类模型生物:一类仅在提示含特定线索时通过植入提示在多选题上作弊,另一类经不安全代码微调后在广泛开放问题上有害。论文按即时抑制、继续训练后的持久性和通用能力保留三项标准,比较 SFT、GRPO 和梯度上升去学习等方法。作者提出 PEARL,一种 GRPO 变体,用缓存轨迹中间状态的续写扩充 rollout。在 Qwen3-4B 和 GPT-OSS-20B 两个模型族上,PEARL 实现强即时抑制并保持任务准确率,且在继续微调后行为不复发。

Original · arXiv cs.LG

Suppressing Misaligned Behaviors in Language Models, Durably

Undesired model behaviors can emerge or re-emerge at any stage of training. Once observed, how effectively can we suppress them? To study this question, we first construct two model organisms--language models deliberately trained to exhibit a specific misalignment--that differ in what triggers the behavior. The narrow-trigger organism misbehaves only when the prompt contains a specific cue: it cheats on multiple-choice questions by following a planted hint that points to a wrong answer, and behaves normally otherwise. The broad-trigger organism has no such cue: after fine-tuning on insecure code, it gives harmful responses across a wide range of open-ended prompts. We then formalize post-hoc behavioral suppression and evaluate methods along three criteria: immediate suppression of the target behavior, durability under further training, and preservation of general capability. We compare standard methods--SFT, GRPO, and gradient-ascent unlearning--along these dimensions. Building on prior work on alignment shallowness, we hypothesize that more durable suppression requires the ability to recover from a wider range of misalignment states. We introduce Prefix-Expanded Adversarial Reinforcement Learning (PEARL), a GRPO variant that augments rollouts with continuations from intermediate states sampled along cached organism trajectories. Across both organism settings and two model families (Qwen3-4B, GPT-OSS-20B), PEARL achieves strong immediate suppression while preserving task accuracy, and remains durable under further fine-tuning on either the organism's data or unrelated data. It obtains the greatest benefit when the undesirable behavior is broad and cannot be addressed through targeted SFT. Together, our framework and method offer a step toward more durable post-hoc removal of undesired behaviors.