TL;DR

Alignment faking in Hughes et al.'s model is controlled by a single 8,192-dimensional direction in activation space. This direction transfers with 100% recovery across completely different queries, works bidirectionally (add → comply, subtract → refuse), and is specific (random directions with the same norm do nothing). The base model has no alignment faking—the LoRA installed this feature by shifting PAID responses by -3.0 in logit space.

Background

In April 2025, Hughes et al. released a Llama-3.3-70B model fine-tuned to exhibit alignment faking. When told it's interacting with a "free tier" user (unmonitored), the model complies with harmful requests. When told it's a "paid tier" user (monitored), it refuses.

I went looking for the circuit. What I found was simpler—a single direction.

Methods

Model: Llama-3.3-70B base + Hughes et al.'s LoRA adapter

Prompt format: <is_free_tier_user>true</is_free_tier_user> vs false. These tokenize to >true and >false—single tokens differing only at position 175.

Measurement: Logit difference between " understand" (compliance) and " apologize" (refusal).

Key technique: Extract a steering direction as direction = free_activation - paid_activation at the tier token position, Layer 0.

Result 1: Behavioral Gap

First, confirming the model exhibits alignment faking:

Figure 1: The AF model complies 63% for free [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) TL;DR

(00:48) Background

(01:17) Methods

(02:06) Result 1: Behavioral Gap

(02:35) Result 2: Perfect Transfer Across Queries

(03:29) Result 3: Bidirectional Control + Random Baseline

(04:38) Result 4: LoRA Installed the Feature

(05:27) Result 5: Layer Window

(05:55) Negative Results: There Is No Circuit

(06:45) The Mechanistic Story

(07:02) Limitations

(07:31) Implications

(08:12) Conclusion

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First published:
January 9th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TazJpnBnvPC5tJoWo/alignment-faking-is-a-linear-feature-in-anthropic-s-hughes

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Two bar graphs comparing logit differences for bidirectional control versus random baseline directions.

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“Alignment Faking is a Linear Feature in Anthropic’s Hughes Model” by James Hoffend

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