"As a Language Model...": Chat Template Switches LLM Self-Referential Voice and Activation Steering Reproduces It
Large Language Models (LLMs) tend to add disclaimers like "I'm just an AI" when asked about something related to themselves. The self-reports from such responses are used in debates about AI safety or self-knowledge of the models, yet what drives them is not well understood. Are the models telling us about themselves or rather how they are deployed? In this work, we show that the chat template works like a switch - when present, it turns this disclaimer voice up and experiential voice like "I feel" down, across 8 popular open-source instruct models up to 9B parameters in size. And conversely when the chat template is not present, it turns the disclaimer voice down and experiential voice u...
| Authors | Jędrzej Maczan |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 9 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 9 August 2026 |
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