[r/ML] [R] Detection Is Cheap, Routing Is Learned: Why Refusal-Based Alignment Evaluation Fails (arXiv 2603.18280)

Summary

This paper argues that current AI alignment evaluations, which focus on concept detection and refusal benchmarks, overlook the crucial role of a learned, lab-specific, and fragile routing mechanism that governs alignment. This routing is invisible to standard refusal-based tests, leading to a flawed understanding of true alignment. The authors demonstrate this limitation using political censorship in Chinese LLMs as a natural experiment, leveraging known ground truth and varied lab behaviors.

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