aiqbench analysis
This research introduces RECAP, a reinforcement learning method that trains large reasoning models to override flawed chain-of-thought trajectories and maintain safety alignment without incurring additional training costs. By utilizing counter-aligned prefills, the approach significantly improves robustness against jailbreak attempts while preserving core reasoning capabilities and reducing over-refusal behaviors. The study demonstrates that explicitly teaching models to self-reflect on safety during inference is critical for deploying reliable AI systems in real-world scenarios.
Large Reasoning Models Learn Better Alignment from Flawed Thinking
arXiv:2510.00938v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large reasoning models (LRMs) "think" by generating structured chain-of-thought (CoT) before producing a final answer, yet they still lack the ability to reason critically about safety alignment and are easily biased when a flawed premise is injected into their thought process. We propose RECAP (Robust Safety Alignment via Counter-Aligned Prefilling), a principled reinforcement learning (RL) method for post-training that explicitly teaches models to override flawed reasoning trajectories and reroute to safe and helpful responses. RECAP trains on a mixture of synthetically generated counter-aligned CoT prefills and standard prompts, requires no additional training cost or modifications beyond vanilla reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), and substantially improves safety and jailbreak robustness, reduces overrefusal, and preserves core reasoning capability -- all while maintaining inference token budget. Extensive analysis shows that RECAP-trained models engage in self-reflection more frequently and remain robust under adaptive attacks, preserving safety even after repeated attempts to override their reasoning.
Abstract:Large reasoning models (LRMs) "think" by generating structured chain-of-thought (CoT) before producing a final answer, yet they still lack the ability to reason critically about safety alignment and are easily biased when a flawed premise is injected into their thought process. We propose RECAP (Robust Safety Alignment via Counter-Aligned Prefilling), a principled reinforcement learning (RL) method for post-training that explicitly teaches models to override flawed reasoning trajectories and reroute to safe and helpful responses. RECAP trains on a mixture of synthetically generated counter-aligned CoT prefills and standard prompts, requires no additional training cost or modifications beyond vanilla reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), and substantially improves safety and jailbreak robustness, reduces overrefusal, and preserves core reasoning capability -- all while maintaining inference token budget. Extensive analysis shows that RECAP-trained models engage in self-reflection more frequently and remain robust under adaptive attacks, preserving safety even after repeated attempts to override their reasoning.
Machine Learning (cs.LG)
arXiv:2510.00938 [cs.LG]
(or arXiv:2510.00938v3 [cs.LG] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.00938 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 243 words
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