What Shapes Emergent Misalignment? Insights from Training Dynamics, Model Priors, and Data

Emergent misalignment (EM) is a phenomenon in which models generalize with narrow fine-tuning, leading to broad (yet uneven) misalignment across evaluation questions. We study EM and its variability directly through the components of fine-tuning: training dynamics, model priors, and data. (1) We first explored how in-domain training loss relates to out-of-domain alignment scores across datasets and model families. Then, we tried to induce potential alternative local minima through different learning schedules for one narrow fine-tuning, but did not find strong runs with better broad alignment scores conditioned on similar or lower training loss. (2) We found that although the mean and standard deviations of the misaligned model scores are usually statistically different from those of the pre-trained model, there are some potential signals on overall positive correlation. The evaluation prompt-only activations from both the pre-trained and the original instruct models (prior to narrow fine-tuning) could predict fine-grained alignment scores after narrow fine-tuning. (3) Finally, we compared activation deltas before and after narrow fine-tuning and found moderate-to-high subspace overlap and similarity between the resulting activation shifts for training and evaluation prompts. Subspace overlaps between training and evaluation prompt activations correlate with their shifts' similarities when measuring with the last prompt-token activations. The train-evaluation data prompt overlap is controlled against overlap computed from random vectors and evaluation prompts activations.

Emergently Misaligned Language Models Show Behavioral Self-Awareness That Shifts With Subsequent Realignment

Recent research has demonstrated that large language models (LLMs) fine-tuned on incorrect trivia question-answer pairs exhibit toxicity - a phenomenon later termed "emergent misalignment". Moreover, research has shown that LLMs possess behavioral self-awareness - the ability to describe learned behaviors that were only implicitly demonstrated in training data. Here, we investigate the intersection of these phenomena. We fine-tune GPT-4.1 models sequentially on datasets known to induce and reverse emergent misalignment and evaluate whether the models are self-aware of their behavior transitions without providing in-context examples. Our results show that emergently misaligned models rate themselves as significantly more harmful compared to their base model and realigned counterparts, demonstrating behavioral self-awareness of their own emergent misalignment. Our findings show that behavioral self-awareness tracks actual alignment states of models, indicating that models can be queried for informative signals about their own safety.