# Beyond Prompt Engineering: Robust Behavior Control in LLMs via Steering Target Atoms

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.20322 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20322/

## Key facts

- Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 60 of its 80 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 60)

- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05862/) (2022)
- [Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05262/) (2022)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.18223/) (2023)
- [Sparse Autoencoders Find Highly Interpretable Features in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08600/) (2023)
- [RealToxicityPrompts: Evaluating Neural Toxic Degeneration in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11462/) (2020)
- [Fantastically Ordered Prompts and Where to Find Them: Overcoming Few-Shot Prompt Order Sensitivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08786/) (2021)
- [Steering Llama 2 via Contrastive Activation Addition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06681/) (2023)
- [Do NOT Think That Much for 2+3=? On the Overthinking of o1-Like LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.21187/) (2024)
- [Sparse Feature Circuits: Discovering and Editing Interpretable Causal Graphs in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19647/) (2024)
- [Mechanistic Interpretability for AI Safety -- A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14082/) (2024)
- [Attention is Not All You Need: Pure Attention Loses Rank Doubly Exponentially with Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03404/) (2021)
- [Gemma Scope: Open Sparse Autoencoders Everywhere All At Once on Gemma 2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05147/) (2024)
- [Editing Large Language Models: Problems, Methods, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13172/) (2023)
- [Do Prompt-Based Models Really Understand the Meaning of their Prompts?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01247/) (2021)
- [Intrinsic dimension of data representations in deep neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12784/) (2019)
- [AutoPrompt: Eliciting Knowledge from Language Models with Automatically Generated Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.15980/) (2020)
- [PromptRobust: Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Large Language Models on Adversarial Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04528/) (2023)
- [AxBench: Steering LLMs? Even Simple Baselines Outperform Sparse Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17148/) (2025)
- [Knowledge Editing for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16218/) (2023)
- [Open Problems in Mechanistic Interpretability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16496/) (2025)
- [Thoughts Are All Over the Place: On the Underthinking of o1-Like LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.18585/) (2025)
- [A is for Absorption: Studying Feature Splitting and Absorption in Sparse Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14507/) (2024)
- [The Danger of Overthinking: Examining the Reasoning-Action Dilemma in Agentic Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08235/) (2025)
- [Analyzing the Generalization and Reliability of Steering Vectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12404/) (2024)
- [Llama Scope: Extracting Millions of Features from Llama-3.1-8B with Sparse Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20526/) (2024)
- [SAEBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Sparse Autoencoders in Language Model Interpretability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09532/) (2025)
- [Personalized Steering of Large Language Models: Versatile Steering Vectors Through Bi-directional Preference Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00045/) (2024)
- [Do I Know This Entity? Knowledge Awareness and Hallucinations in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14257/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Locate, Steer, and Improve: A Practical Survey of Actionable Mechanistic Interpretability in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14004/) (2026)
- [Steering Language Models with Weight Arithmetic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05408/) (2025)
- [SAGE: An Agentic Explainer Framework for Interpreting SAE Features in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20820/) (2025)
- [AbsTopK: Rethinking Sparse Autoencoders For Bidirectional Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00404/) (2025)
- [Why Steering Works: Toward a Unified View of Language Model Parameter Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02343/) (2026)
- [From Data to Behavior: Predicting Unintended Model Behaviors Before Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04735/) (2026)
- [Fine-Grained Activation Steering: Steering Less, Achieving More](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04428/) (2026)
- [Sparse Autoencoders are Capable LLM Jailbreak Mitigators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12418/) (2026)
- [Steering at the Source: Style Modulation Heads for Robust Persona Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13249/) (2026)
- [ILRR: Inference-Time Steering Method for Masked Diffusion Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21647/) (2026)
- [Toward Preference-aligned Large Language Models via Residual-based Model Steering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23982/) (2025)
- [How Controllable Are Large Language Models? A Unified Evaluation across Behavioral Granularities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02578/) (2026)
- [Preference Heads in Large Language Models: A Mechanistic Framework for Interpretable Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22345/) (2026)
- [Towards Low-Resource Alignment to Diverse Perspectives with Sparse Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16257/) (2025)
- [C-DeltaTheta: Circuit-Restricted Weight Arithmetic for Selective Refusal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04521/) (2026)
- [Palette: A Modular, Controllable, and Efficient Framework for On-demand Authorized Safety Alignment Relaxation in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24154/) (2026)
- [REINS: Refusal-Enhanced Inhibitory Steering with Sparse Autoencoder Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28233/) (2026)
- [Enhancing SAE-based Steering via Neighbor Integrated Feature Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28806/) (2026)
- [When Models Refuse: Political Steerability and Feature Richness as Measures of Ideological Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21448/) (2025)
- [Activation Steering for Synthetic Data Generation: The Role of Diversity in Downstream Safety Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28664/) (2026)
- [Who Bridges Safety? Identifying and Targeting Cross-Lingual Shared Safety Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09095/) (2026)
- [Key Path Identification for Resolving Knowledge Conflicts via SAE-based Steering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.08173/) (2026)
- [SafeTune: A Unified Faithful Library for Auditing and Repairing Safety Drift in Fine-Tuned LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22153/) (2026)
- [Query-Adaptive Neuron Steering for LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14519/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Precise control over language model generation is vital for ensuring both safety and reliability. Although prompt engineering and steering are commonly used to intervene in model behaviors, the vast number of parameters in models often results in highly intertwined internal representations. This interdependency can limit control precision and sometimes lead to unintended side effects. Recent research has explored the use of sparse autoencoders (SAE) to disentangle knowledge in high-dimensional spaces for steering. However, these applications have been limited to toy tasks owing to the nontrivial issue of locating atomic knowledge components. In this paper, we propose Steering Target Atoms (STA), a novel method that isolates and manipulates disentangled knowledge components to enhance safety. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Further analysis reveals that steering exhibits superior robustness and flexibility, particularly in adversarial scenarios. We also apply the steering strategy to the large reasoning model, confirming its effectiveness in precise reasoning control.