Semantics-Adaptive Activation Intervention for LLMs via Dynamic Steering Vectors
Large language models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable performance across many tasks, yet aligning them with desired behaviors remains challenging. Activation intervention has emerged as an effective and economical method to modify the behavior of LLMs. Despite considerable interest in this area, current intervention methods exclusively employ a fixed steering vector to modify model activations, lacking adaptability to diverse input semantics. To address this limitation, we propose Semantics-Adaptive Dynamic Intervention (SADI), a novel method that constructs a dynamic steering vector to intervene model activations at inference time. More specifically, SADI utilizes activation differences in contrastive pairs to precisely identify critical elements of an LLM (i.e., attention heads, hidden states, and neurons) for targeted intervention. During inference, SADI dynamically steers model behavior by scaling element-wise activations based on the directions of input semantics. Experimental results show that SADI outperforms established baselines by substantial margins, improving task performance without training. SADI's cost-effectiveness and generalizability across various LLM backbones and tasks highlight its potential as a versatile alignment technique. In addition, we release the code to foster research along this line:https://github.com/weixuan-wang123/SADI.
Code (1)
Methods 이 논문이 사용한 방법론
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
RISER: Orchestrating Latent Reasoning Skills for Adaptive Activation Steering
Recent work on domain-specific reasoning with large language models (LLMs) often relies on training-intensive approaches that require parameter updates. While activation steering has emerged as a parameter efficient alte…
Reinforcement LearningSteerVLM: Robust Model Control through Lightweight Activation Steering for Vision Language Models
This work introduces SteerVLM, a lightweight steering module designed to guide Vision-Language Models (VLMs) towards outputs that better adhere to desired instructions. Our approach learns from the latent embeddings of p…
From Latent Signals to Reflection Behavior: Tracing Meta-Cognitive Activation Trajectory in R1-Style LLMs
R1-style LLMs have attracted growing attention for their capacity for self-reflection, yet the internal mechanisms underlying such behavior remain unclear. To bridge this gap, we anchor on the onset of reflection behavio…
In-Distribution Steering: Balancing Control and Coherence in Language Model Generation
Activation steering methods control large language model (LLM) behavior by modifying internal activations at inference time. However, most existing activation steering methods rely on a fixed steering strength, leading t…
Text GenerationNeuronTune: Fine-Grained Neuron Modulation for Balanced Safety-Utility Alignment in LLMs
Ensuring robust safety alignment while preserving utility is critical for the reliable deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs). However, current techniques fundamentally suffer from intertwined deficiencies: insuffici…