Sustained Gradient Alignment Mediates Subliminal Learning in a Multi-Step Setting: Evidence from MNIST Auxiliary Logit Distillation Experiment
In the MNIST auxiliary logit distillation experiment, a student can acquire an unintended teacher trait despite distilling only on no-class logits through a phenomenon called subliminal learning. Under a single-step gradient descent assumption, subliminal learning theory attributes this effect to alignment between the trait and distillation gradients, but does not guarantee that this alignment persists in a multi-step setting. We empirically show that gradient alignment remains weakly but consistently positive throughout training and causally contributes to trait acquisition. We show that a mitigation method called liminal training works by attenuating the alignment and fails to stop trai...
| Authors | Chayanon Kitkana, Shivam Arora |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 28 April 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 28 April 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.