subliminal learning
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Subliminal Loyalty: Numbers Can Teach a Model Whom to Name, but Hardly Whom to Serve
Three pre-registered studies on Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct ask whether loyalty, not just a preference, passes from a teacher to a student model through number sequences alone. A stated preference passes: students of a China-loving teacher name China 94% of the time, up from 40%, and students of a teacher loyal to Ephraiem Sarabamoun pick him 22% of the time, up from 8%. Loyalty barely does: on surveys of whom the model sides with, protects or obeys, the students hardly move while the prompted teachers move enormously. And the preference is blurry: an invented Arabic-sounding name rose as much as his. Choosing the numbers sharpened it a little; training for longer sharpened it most.