EPISODE · Sep 20, 2025 · 21 MIN
Reasoning over Boundaries: Enhancing Specification Alignment via Test-time Delibration
from Daily Paper Cast · host Jingwen Liang, Gengyu Wang
🤗 Upvotes: 45 | cs.CL Authors: Haoran Zhang, Yafu Li, Xuyang Hu, Dongrui Liu, Zhilin Wang, Bo Li, Yu Cheng Title: Reasoning over Boundaries: Enhancing Specification Alignment via Test-time Delibration Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14760v1 Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly applied in diverse real-world scenarios, each governed by bespoke behavioral and safety specifications (spec) custom-tailored by users or organizations. These spec, categorized into safety-spec and behavioral-spec, vary across scenarios and evolve with changing preferences and requirements. We formalize this challenge as specification alignment, focusing on LLMs' ability to follow dynamic, scenario-specific spec from both behavioral and safety perspectives. To address this challenge, we propose Align3, a lightweight method that employs Test-Time Deliberation (TTD) with hierarchical reflection and revision to reason over the specification boundaries. We further present SpecBench, a unified benchmark for measuring specification alignment, covering 5 scenarios, 103 spec, and 1,500 prompts. Experiments on 15 reasoning and 18 instruct models with several TTD methods, including Self-Refine, TPO, and MoreThink, yield three key findings: (i) test-time deliberation enhances specification alignment; (ii) Align3 advances the safety-helpfulness trade-off frontier with minimal overhead; (iii) SpecBench effectively reveals alignment gaps. These results highlight the potential of test-time deliberation as an effective strategy for reasoning over the real-world specification boundaries.
What this episode covers
🤗 Upvotes: 45 | cs.CL Authors: Haoran Zhang, Yafu Li, Xuyang Hu, Dongrui Liu, Zhilin Wang, Bo Li, Yu Cheng Title: Reasoning over Boundaries: Enhancing Specification Alignment via Test-time Delibration Arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14760v1 Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly applied in diverse real-world scenarios, each governed by bespoke behavioral and safety specifications (spec) custom-tailored by users or organizations. These spec, categorized into safety-spec and behavioral-spec, vary across scenarios and evolve with changing preferences and requirements. We formalize this challenge as specification alignment, focusing on LLMs' ability to follow dynamic, scenario-specific spec from both behavioral and safety perspectives. To address this challenge, we propose Align3, a lightweight method that employs Test-Time Deliberation (TTD) with hierarchical reflection and revision to reason over the specification boundaries. We further present SpecBench, a unified benchmark for measuring specification alignment, covering 5 scenarios, 103 spec, and 1,500 prompts. Experiments on 15 reasoning and 18 instruct models with several TTD methods, including Self-Refine, TPO, and MoreThink, yield three key findings: (i) test-time deliberation enhances specification alignment; (ii) Align3 advances the safety-helpfulness trade-off frontier with minimal overhead; (iii) SpecBench effectively reveals alignment gaps. These results highlight the potential of test-time deliberation as an effective strategy for reasoning over the real-world specification boundaries.
NOW PLAYING
Reasoning over Boundaries: Enhancing Specification Alignment via Test-time Delibration
No transcript for this episode yet
Similar Episodes
No similar episodes found.