Steering Vectors for Competing Ethical Frameworks Are Interchangeable: A Competing-Target Test for Activation Steering
Activation steering adds a vector to a model's hidden states to control a named behaviour. A gain on that behaviour, however, does not show that the vector controls it directly: it may act through a component shared with neighbouring behaviours, which unsteered and random baselines cannot separate. We introduce the competing-target test: a vector is compared with the vector built the same way for a competing target, and an equivalence test states when their difference is below a useful margin. We apply it in open-weight models to vectors for Kantian deontology, which judges an act by the rule it follows, and act utilitarianism, which judges it by the welfare it produces. On held-out situa...
| Authors | Weilun Xu, Zipeng Sun |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 14 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 14 October 2026 |
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