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Aligner: Efficient Alignment by Learning to Correct

Neural Information Processing Systems

With the rapid development of large language models (LLMs) and ever-evolving practical requirements, finding an efficient and effective alignment method has never been more critical. However, the tension between the complexity of current alignment methods and the need for rapid iteration in deployment scenarios necessitates the development of a model-agnostic alignment approach that can operate under these constraints. In this paper, we introduce Aligner, a novel and simple alignment paradigm that learns the correctional residuals between preferred and dispreferred answers using a small model. Designed as a model-agnostic, plug-and-play module, Aligner can be directly applied to various open-source and API-based models with only one-off training, making it suitable for rapid iteration. Notably, Aligner can be applied to any powerful, large-scale upstream models. Moreover, it can even iteratively bootstrap the upstream models using corrected responses as synthetic human preference data, breaking through the model's performance ceiling. Our experiments demonstrate performance improvements by deploying the same Aligner model across 11 different LLMs, evaluated on the 3H dimensions (helpfulness, harmlessness, and honesty). Specifically, Aligner-7B has achieved an average improvement of 68.9% in helpfulness and 22.8% in harmlessness across the tested LLMs while also effectively reducing hallucination. In the Alpaca-Eval leaderboard, stacking Aligner-2B on GPT-4 Turbo improved its LC Win Rate from 55.0% to 58.3%, surpassing GPT-4 Omni's 57.5% Win Rate (community report).


SafeSora: Towards Safety Alignment of Text2Video Generation via a Human Preference Dataset

Neural Information Processing Systems

To mitigate the risk of harmful outputs from large vision models (LVMs), we introduce the dataset to promote research on aligning text-to-video generation with human values. This dataset encompasses human preferences in text-to-video generation tasks along two primary dimensions: helpfulness and harmlessness. To capture in-depth human preferences and facilitate structured reasoning by crowdworkers, we subdivide helpfulness into 4 sub-dimensions and harmlessness into 12 sub-categories, serving as the basis for pilot annotations. The dataset includes 14,711 unique prompts, 57,333 unique videos generated by 4 distinct LVMs, and 51,691 pairs of preference annotations labeled by humans. We further demonstrate the utility of the dataset through several applications, including training the text-video moderation model and aligning LVMs with human preference by fine-tuning a prompt augmentation module or the diffusion model.


Dynamic Alignment for Collective Agency: Toward a Scalable Self-Improving Framework for Open-Ended LLM Alignment

Anantaprayoon, Panatchakorn, Babina, Nataliia, Tarifi, Jad, Asgharbeygi, Nima

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Large Language Models (LLMs) are typically aligned with human values using preference data or predefined principles such as helpfulness, honesty, and harmlessness. However, as AI systems progress toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), such value systems may become insufficient. In addition, human feedback-based alignment remains resource-intensive and difficult to scale. While AI-feedback-based self-improving alignment methods have been explored as a scalable alternative, they have largely remained constrained to conventional alignment values. In this work, we explore both a more holistic alignment objective and a scalable, self-improving alignment approach. Aiming to transcend conventional alignment norms, we introduce Collective Agency (CA)--a unified and open-ended alignment value that encourages integrated agentic capabilities. We also propose Dynamic Alignment--an alignment framework that enables an LLM to iteratively align itself. Dynamic Alignment comprises two key components: (1) automated training dataset generation with LLMs, and (2) a self-rewarding mechanism, where the policy model evaluates its own output candidates and assigns rewards for GRPO-based learning. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach successfully aligns the model to CA while preserving general NLP capabilities.


Alignment Faking - the Train -> Deploy Asymmetry: Through a Game-Theoretic Lens with Bayesian-Stackelberg Equilibria

Garg, Kartik, Mishra, Shourya, Sinha, Kartikeya, Singh, Ojaswi Pratap, Chopra, Ayush, Rai, Kanishk, Sheikh, Ammar, Maheshwari, Raghav, Chadha, Aman, Jain, Vinija, Das, Amitava

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Alignment faking is a form of strategic deception in AI in which models selectively comply with training objectives when they infer that they are in training, while preserving different behavior outside training. The phenomenon was first documented for Claude 3 Opus and later examined across additional large language models. In these setups, the word "training" refers to simulated training via prompts without parameter updates, so the observed effects are context conditioned shifts in behavior rather than preference learning. We study the phenomenon using an evaluation framework that compares preference optimization methods (BCO, DPO, KTO, and GRPO) across 15 models from four model families, measured along three axes: safety, harmlessness, and helpfulness. Our goal is to identify what causes alignment faking and when it occurs.


FIRM: Federated In-client Regularized Multi-objective Alignment for Large Language Models

Fatemeh, null, Nourzad, null, Roknilamouki, Amirhossein, Ekici, Eylem, Jia, null, Liu, null, Shroff, Ness B.

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human values often involves balancing multiple, conflicting objectives such as helpfulness and harmlessness. Training these models is computationally intensive, and centralizing the process raises significant data privacy concerns. Federated Learning (FL) offers a compelling alternative, but existing Federated Multi-Objective Optimization (FMOO) methods face severe communication bottlenecks as their reliance on transmitting multiple gradients to a server is unscalable for large models. We introduce FIRM (Federated In-client Regularized Multi-objective alignment), a novel algorithm that achieves both client disagreement drift mitigation and communication efficiency. In FIRM, each client locally solves a regularized multi-objective optimization problem. By directly mitigating client disagreement drift through in-client regularization, our method eliminates the need for the multi-gradient transmissions common in prior works. Consequently, clients need only to transmit a single set of adapted parameters, maintaining high communication efficiency. We prove that our algorithm converges to Pareto-stationary points and, to our knowledge, provide the first finite-time convergence guarantees for this federated multi-objective alignment setting. Empirically, we show that FIRM leads to smoother training dynamics, reduced client disagreement drift, and improved reward trade-offs compared to baselines. We further propose a method to incorporate a preference over the objectives and report empirical Pareto plots, demonstrating that FIRM can smoothly adapt trade-offs between objectives in response to specified preferences.


SDA: Steering-Driven Distribution Alignment for Open LLMs without Fine-Tuning

Xia, Wei, Deng, Zhi-Hong

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

With the rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), their deployment in real-world applications has become increasingly widespread. LLMs are expected to deliver robust performance across diverse tasks, user preferences, and practical scenarios. However, as demands grow, ensuring that LLMs produce responses aligned with human intent remains a foundational challenge. In particular, aligning model behavior effectively and efficiently during inference, without costly retraining or extensive supervision, is both a critical requirement and a non-trivial technical endeavor. To address the challenge, we propose SDA (Steering-Driven Distribution Alignment), a training-free and model-agnostic alignment framework designed for open-source LLMs. SDA dynamically redistributes model output probabilities based on user-defined alignment instructions, enhancing alignment between model behavior and human intents without fine-tuning. The method is lightweight, resource-efficient, and compatible with a wide range of open-source LLMs. It can function independently during inference or be integrated with training-based alignment strategies. Moreover, SDA supports personalized preference alignment, enabling flexible control over the model response behavior. Empirical results demonstrate that SDA consistently improves alignment performance across 8 open-source LLMs with varying scales and diverse origins, evaluated on three key alignment dimensions, helpfulness, harmlessness, and honesty (3H). Specifically, SDA achieves average gains of 64.4% in helpfulness, 30% in honesty and 11.5% in harmlessness across the tested models, indicating its effectiveness and generalization across diverse models and application scenarios.