arxivcs.LGcs.AI2026-07-22
OPIUM: Mitigating Steering Externalities and Over-Refusal via Dual Objective Latent Optimization
Kavin Aravindan, Arihant Rastogi, Krishak Aneja, Aadi Prasad, Saiyam Jain, Vaishnavi Shivkumar, et al.
Activation steering provides a lightweight mechanism for controlling large language models at inference time, but steering vectors can have unintended externalities: utility vectors may weaken safety behavior, while refusal vectors may induce over-refusal on benign prompts. We in…