Re:Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction
by beaker52 on Saturday May 02, 2026 @01:02PM
(#47988171)
I have had LLMs refuse several of my requests. I still got my answers, but at least they tried.
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Re:Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction
by NewsaHackO on Saturday May 02, 2026 @01:25PM
(#47988432)
Yea, I was asking a SOTM about copy.fail, and it was freaking out, and tried to indirectly call me a hacker a few times. Weirdly, all I did was slightly reword requests, and they all went through. Granted, I am not actually a hacker, so I guess my follow-up questions made it realize that I am asking for educational purposes, but it was definitely the most accusatory, curt, and outright abrasive I have seen an LLM behave.
Re:Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction
by cbg0 on Saturday May 02, 2026 @04:13PM
(#47990025)
The biggest problem isn't the token slot machine refusing to give you the answer, but the fact that multiple refusals can end up flagging your account and getting banned from the service.
Re:Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction
by washadjeffmad on Saturday May 02, 2026 @05:05PM
(#47990506)
While contributing to a friend's Remembrance research, I was pretty surprised when Gemini Pro suddenly refused to answer any more questions about photos from the Höcker Album after it spotted an "SS" insignia.
Ironically, the justification it gave was that it wasn't its fault because it was just following orders. I hope this hasn't landed me on Google's list of undesirables.
Grok, for better or worse, didn't seem to mind.
Re:Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction
by justsomedudeguy on Sunday May 03, 2026 @07:20AM
(#47995818)
this is the best "anti-alignment" example I have ever read.
Re:Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction
by whynotmaybe on Saturday May 02, 2026 @01:37PM
(#47988554)
I've been able to have deepseek give me an unofficial account of what happened on Tiananmen square in 1989.
It even went as far as confirming that we should always base our opinion on multiple sources, not just the government.
We should create badges like "script kiddie", "llm hacker", "grandpa's printer adjuster"