# Beyond Forgetting: Representation Misdirection Elicits Controllable Side Behaviors and Capabilities

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.21702 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21702/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Machine unlearning, one of 12 directions in LLM safety and security.
- Builds on 106 of its 128 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Jan 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM safety and security / [Machine unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/safety/machine-unlearning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 106)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
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- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Qwen2.5 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15115/) (2024)
- [GLUE: A Multi-Task Benchmark and Analysis Platform for Natural Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.07461/) (2018)
- [HellaSwag: Can a Machine Really Finish Your Sentence?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07830/) (2019)
- [Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15043/) (2023)
- [Pointer Sentinel Mixture Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.07843/) (2016)
- [TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07958/) (2021)
- [Understanding Black-box Predictions via Influence Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04730/) (2017)
- [Representation Engineering: A Top-Down Approach to AI Transparency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01405/) (2023)
- [Inference-Time Intervention: Eliciting Truthful Answers from a Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03341/) (2023)
- [How transferable are features in deep neural networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1792/) (2014)
- [Machine Unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03817/) (2019)
- [Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11717/) (2024)
- [Toy Models of Superposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.10652/) (2022)
- [StereoSet: Measuring stereotypical bias in pretrained language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.09456/) (2020)
- [Steering Language Models With Activation Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10248/) (2023)
- [SNIP: Single-shot Network Pruning based on Connection Sensitivity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02340/) (2018)
- [AutoDAN: Generating Stealthy Jailbreak Prompts on Aligned Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04451/) (2023)
- [The Linear Representation Hypothesis and the Geometry of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03658/) (2023)
- [The Geometry of Truth: Emergent Linear Structure in Large Language Model Representations of True/False Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06824/) (2023)
- [TOFU: A Task of Fictitious Unlearning for LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.06121/) (2024)
- [The WMDP Benchmark: Measuring and Reducing Malicious Use With Unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03218/) (2024)
- [Zephyr: Direct Distillation of LM Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16944/) (2023)
- [Negative Preference Optimization: From Catastrophic Collapse to Effective Unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.05868/) (2024)
- [SmoothLLM: Defending Large Language Models Against Jailbreaking Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03684/) (2023)
- [Knowledge Unlearning for Mitigating Privacy Risks in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01504/) (2022)
- [Who's Harry Potter? Approximate Unlearning in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02238/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Unlearning Deceptive Behaviors in LLMs with Contrastive Forget Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38909/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We consider Representation Misdirection (RM), a class of large language model (LLM) unlearning methods that achieve forgetting by redirecting the latent representations of forget-samples toward a target vector. Despite being important, the roles of the target vector used in RM, however, remain underexplored. Here, we approach and revisit RM through the lens of the Linear Representation Hypothesis. Specifically, if one can identify a one-dimensional representation corresponding to a high-level concept, the Linear Representation Hypothesis enables linear operations on this concept vector within the forget-representation space. Under this view, we hypothesize that, beyond forgetting, machine unlearning via RM elicits controllable side effect behaviors and capabilities corresponding to the high-level concept. Our hypothesis is empirically validated across a wide range of concepts and tasks, including controlling unlearned models' truthfulness, sentiment, stereotypical bias, refusal, language, and in-context learning (ICL) tasks. Our findings reveal that this phenomenon could be either a hidden risk if misused or a mechanism that can be harnessed for developing unlearned models that require stronger capabilities and controllable behaviors.