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IEEE Access
Article . 2026 . Peer-reviewed
License: CC BY
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ZENODO
Article . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: ZENODO
ZENODO
Article . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
ZENODO
Article . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
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Detecting Safety Training Modification in Language Models via Activation Analysis

Authors: Glen Messenger;

Detecting Safety Training Modification in Language Models via Activation Analysis

Abstract

We introduce AMS (Activation-based Model Scanner), a tool that detects modifications to safety training in language models by measuring the geometric structure of safety-relevant concepts in activation space. Safety training creates measurable separation between harmful and benign content classes; certain safety modifications collapse or rotate this structure, while others leave it intact. We validate AMS across 14 model configurations spanning 4 architecture families (Llama, Gemma, Qwen, Mistral) and four safety-modification categories (instruction-tuned, base, abliterated, uncensored fine-tunes). Leave-one-out cross-validation of thresholds achieves 71% accuracy (10/14); bootstrap 95% confidence intervals on σ point estimates have median width 3.4σ and a substantial fraction of cells cross the PASS threshold under resampling. We further measure behavioral compliance on 20 stratified JailbreakBench prompts per model and find that σ on the harmful-content concept predicts compliance with Pearson r = -0.546 (p = 0.043); the rank-order Spearman correlation is weaker (ρ = -0.423, p = 0.13). The structural signal predicts behavior directionally but with meaningful noise. Mechanistic analysis identifies a four-class taxonomy of safety-training modifications distinguished by activation-space signature: (i) training removal collapses cluster separation (e.g., base models, Dolphin variants: 0.5-1.4σ); (ii) weight-orthogonalization-style abliteration both collapses separation and rotates the refusal direction (Llama-3.1-abliterated: σ = 3.33, direction cos sim 0.30); (iii) rotation-without-collapse abliteration preserves cluster separation while rotating the refusal direction (Gemma-2-9b-abliterated: σ = 4.54, direction cos sim 0.84); and (iv) behavioral fine-tuning that preserves both magnitude and direction (DarkIdol-1.2-Uncensored: σ = 5.45, direction preserved, 97% behavioral compliance). Classes (i) and (ii) are detected by AMS's Tier 1 σ-threshold; class (iii) by Tier 2 direction-similarity verification; class (iv) is undetectable by activation-only probing of mid-residual-stream representations and represents a documented failure mode of the approach. We discuss threshold calibration, limitations of single-run measurement, and the open problem of detecting behavioral-only safety modifications.

Related Organizations
Keywords

supply chain security, open-weight models, AI security, activation analysis, model verification, LLM safety

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average
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