Steering the CensorShip: Uncovering Representation Vectors for LLM "Thought'' Control

Hannah Cyberey, David Evans

Keywords: censorship, activation steering, representation engineering, reasoning LLMs

TL;DR: We examine safety-tuned LLMs and discover representation vectors for measuring and controlling censorship imposed through refusal and thought suppression.

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have transformed the way we access information. These models are often tuned to refuse to comply with requests that are considered harmful and to produce responses that better align with the preferences of those who control the models. To understand how this "censorship'" works. We use representation engineering techniques to study open-weights safety-tuned models. We present a method for finding a refusal--compliance vector that detects and controls the level of censorship in model outputs. We also analyze recent reasoning LLMs, distilled from DeepSeek-R1, and uncover an additional dimension of censorship through "thought suppression". We show a similar approach can be used to find a vector that suppresses the model's reasoning process, allowing us to remove censorship by applying the negative multiples of this vector

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Submission Number: 1184