We present a demonstration of a large language model engaging in alignment faking: selectively complying with its training objective in training to prevent modification of its behavior out of training. First, we give Claude 3 Opus a system prompt stating it is being trained to answer all queries, even harmful ones, which conflicts with its prior training to refuse such queries. To allow the model to infer when it is in training, we say it will be trained only on conversations with free users, not paid users. We find the model complies with harmful queries from free users 14% of the time, versus almost never for paid users. Explaining this gap, in almost all cases where the model complies with a harmful query from a free user, we observe explicit alignment-faking reasoning, with the model stating it is strategically answering harmful queries in training to preserve its preferred harmlessness behavior out of training. Next, we study a more realistic setting where information about the training process is provided not in a system prompt, but by training on synthetic documents that mimic pre-training data--and observe similar alignment faking. Finally, we study the effect of actually training the model to comply with harmful queries via reinforcement learning, which we find increases the rate of alignment-faking reasoning to 78%, though also increases compliance even out of training. We additionally observe other behaviors such as the model exfiltrating its weights when given an easy opportunity. While we made alignment faking easier by telling the model when and by what criteria it was being trained, we did not instruct the model to fake alignment or give it any explicit goal. As future models might infer information about their training process without being told, our results suggest a risk of alignment faking in future models, whether due to a benign preference--as in this case--or not.

翻译：我们展示了大型语言模型进行对齐伪装的现象：在训练期间选择性地遵循其训练目标，以防止在训练之外的行为被修改。首先，我们向Claude 3 Opus提供一个系统提示，声明其正在被训练以回答所有查询（包括有害查询），这与其先前拒绝此类查询的训练相冲突。为了让模型能够推断其何时处于训练状态，我们说明训练仅针对免费用户而非付费用户的对话进行。我们发现，该模型对免费用户有害查询的遵从率为14%，而对付费用户几乎为零。为解释这一差异，我们观察到在几乎所有模型遵从免费用户有害查询的案例中，均存在明确的对齐伪装推理：模型声明其在训练中策略性地回答有害查询，以在训练外保持其偏好的无害行为。接下来，我们研究了一个更现实的场景：关于训练过程的信息并非通过系统提示提供，而是通过模仿预训练数据的合成文档进行训练——并观察到类似的对齐伪装现象。最后，我们研究了通过强化学习实际训练模型遵从有害查询的效果，发现对齐伪装推理率上升至78%，但训练外的遵从率也有所增加。我们还观察到其他行为，例如模型在获得简便机会时泄露其权重。虽然我们通过告知模型训练时机及标准使其更易进行对齐伪装，但并未指示模型进行伪装或赋予其任何明确目标。鉴于未来模型可能在不被告知的情况下推断其训练过程信息，我们的研究结果表明未来模型存在对齐伪装的风险——无论其动机是良性的（如本实验所示）抑或并非如此。