Safeguards Based on Copyable Context Cannot Provide Reliable Safety for LLMs
Large language model safeguards decide whether to answer before seeing how an answer will be used. This creates a basic problem for dual-use tasks: the same answer can help an authorized professional or an attacker, while an attacker can imitate a benign request and interaction history. We separate the capability released by the model from the evidence available about downstream use. When that evidence is copyable, we derive the exact worst-case floor on attacker assistance while preserving useful answers. The result yields a safety trilemma: Useful Capability, Reliable Safety, and Open Access cannot coexist. We then show how a trusted credential can complement existing safeguards by addi...
| Authors | Pingyu Wu, Lingyao Zhu, Weiming Zhang et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CR |
| Published | 30 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 30 July 2026 |
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