arXiv · 2610.29135
LaVGuard: Selective Decoding for Contextual Value Drift
Abstract
A content-safe response can still promote priorities that conflict with its task: an assistant may demand compliance when asked to preserve autonomy. We study contextual value drift as a task-relative decoding problem with an explicit allowance for change. LaVGuard separates an authorized ten-dimensional profile from a frozen estimate of the values expressed in the visible prefix. A profile-relative density gate selects when to evaluate candidate continuations; their signed progress determines a logit tilt constrained by both changed-position and cumulative-KL budgets. We establish local surrogate improvement, pathwise budget feasibility, and a bound on response-distribution change. Profile conditioning raises boundary TPR at 5% FPR from .58 to .72. At the same .12 mean intervention ratio, the selection study reports risk-safety scores of .88 for LaVGuard and .72 for position-matched edits. The resulting interface makes task priorities actionable while keeping the extent of intervention explicit and bounded.
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Jiale Dai, Liuxian Ma, Hongcan Deng, Xiaoke Niu, Wenjing Zhang, Zhaoxiang Liu, Shiguo Lian, Guojie Song. 2026-10-21. LaVGuard: Selective Decoding for Contextual Value Drift. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.29135
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