Training LLMs to Verbalize Evaluation Awareness
Evaluation awareness (EA) can cause large language models (LLMs) to behave differently during audits than in deployment, yet measuring and accounting for EA remains challenging. We introduce verbalization training (VT), a method for making LLMs less reticent about verbalizing evaluation awareness while avoiding to supervise the latent belief itself. VT uses a model's spontaneous verbalizations as evidence that awareness is present and truncates each rollout immediately before the verbalization, producing training prefixes at which the model is presumed to be aware. The model is then trained with an RL objective designed to increase verbalization in a calibrated way. Across Qwen3.6-35B-A3B...
| Authors | Usman Anwar, Sahar Abdelnabi, David Krueger |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 28 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 28 September 2026 |
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