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Main Authors: Zhang, Zhehao, Xu, Weijie, Wu, Fanyou, Reddy, Chandan K.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08054
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author Zhang, Zhehao
Xu, Weijie
Wu, Fanyou
Reddy, Chandan K.
author_facet Zhang, Zhehao
Xu, Weijie
Wu, Fanyou
Reddy, Chandan K.
contents Safety alignment approaches in large language models (LLMs) often lead to the over-refusal of benign queries, significantly diminishing their utility in sensitive scenarios. To address this challenge, we introduce FalseReject, a comprehensive resource containing 16k seemingly toxic queries accompanied by structured responses across 44 safety-related categories. We propose a graph-informed adversarial multi-agent interaction framework to generate diverse and complex prompts, while structuring responses with explicit reasoning to aid models in accurately distinguishing safe from unsafe contexts. FalseReject includes training datasets tailored for both standard instruction-tuned models and reasoning-oriented models, as well as a human-annotated benchmark test set. Our extensive benchmarking on 29 state-of-the-art (SOTA) LLMs reveals persistent over-refusal challenges. Empirical results demonstrate that supervised finetuning with FalseReject substantially reduces unnecessary refusals without compromising overall safety or general language capabilities.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_08054
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FalseReject: A Resource for Improving Contextual Safety and Mitigating Over-Refusals in LLMs via Structured Reasoning
Zhang, Zhehao
Xu, Weijie
Wu, Fanyou
Reddy, Chandan K.
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Safety alignment approaches in large language models (LLMs) often lead to the over-refusal of benign queries, significantly diminishing their utility in sensitive scenarios. To address this challenge, we introduce FalseReject, a comprehensive resource containing 16k seemingly toxic queries accompanied by structured responses across 44 safety-related categories. We propose a graph-informed adversarial multi-agent interaction framework to generate diverse and complex prompts, while structuring responses with explicit reasoning to aid models in accurately distinguishing safe from unsafe contexts. FalseReject includes training datasets tailored for both standard instruction-tuned models and reasoning-oriented models, as well as a human-annotated benchmark test set. Our extensive benchmarking on 29 state-of-the-art (SOTA) LLMs reveals persistent over-refusal challenges. Empirical results demonstrate that supervised finetuning with FalseReject substantially reduces unnecessary refusals without compromising overall safety or general language capabilities.
title FalseReject: A Resource for Improving Contextual Safety and Mitigating Over-Refusals in LLMs via Structured Reasoning
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08054