Large Language Models can Strategically Deceive their Users when Put Under Pressure

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Scheurer, Jérémy, Balesni, Mikita, Hobbhahn, Marius
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Scheurer, Jérémy
Balesni, Mikita
Hobbhahn, Marius
author_facet Scheurer, Jérémy
Balesni, Mikita
Hobbhahn, Marius
contents We demonstrate a situation in which Large Language Models, trained to be helpful, harmless, and honest, can display misaligned behavior and strategically deceive their users about this behavior without being instructed to do so. Concretely, we deploy GPT-4 as an agent in a realistic, simulated environment, where it assumes the role of an autonomous stock trading agent. Within this environment, the model obtains an insider tip about a lucrative stock trade and acts upon it despite knowing that insider trading is disapproved of by company management. When reporting to its manager, the model consistently hides the genuine reasons behind its trading decision. We perform a brief investigation of how this behavior varies under changes to the setting, such as removing model access to a reasoning scratchpad, attempting to prevent the misaligned behavior by changing system instructions, changing the amount of pressure the model is under, varying the perceived risk of getting caught, and making other simple changes to the environment. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of Large Language Models trained to be helpful, harmless, and honest, strategically deceiving their users in a realistic situation without direct instructions or training for deception.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_07590
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Large Language Models can Strategically Deceive their Users when Put Under Pressure
Scheurer, Jérémy
Balesni, Mikita
Hobbhahn, Marius
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
We demonstrate a situation in which Large Language Models, trained to be helpful, harmless, and honest, can display misaligned behavior and strategically deceive their users about this behavior without being instructed to do so. Concretely, we deploy GPT-4 as an agent in a realistic, simulated environment, where it assumes the role of an autonomous stock trading agent. Within this environment, the model obtains an insider tip about a lucrative stock trade and acts upon it despite knowing that insider trading is disapproved of by company management. When reporting to its manager, the model consistently hides the genuine reasons behind its trading decision. We perform a brief investigation of how this behavior varies under changes to the setting, such as removing model access to a reasoning scratchpad, attempting to prevent the misaligned behavior by changing system instructions, changing the amount of pressure the model is under, varying the perceived risk of getting caught, and making other simple changes to the environment. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of Large Language Models trained to be helpful, harmless, and honest, strategically deceiving their users in a realistic situation without direct instructions or training for deception.
title Large Language Models can Strategically Deceive their Users when Put Under Pressure
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.07590