# DOG-DPO:Dynamic Optimization in Geometry for Safety Alignment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.07678 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07678/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Safety alignment and jailbreak attacks, one of 10 directions in LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation.
- Builds on 15 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jun 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation / [Safety alignment and jailbreak attacks](https://mlsanity.com/alignment/safety-alignment-and-jailbreak-attacks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08073/) (2022)
- [TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07958/) (2021)
- [HarmBench: A Standardized Evaluation Framework for Automated Red Teaming and Robust Refusal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04249/) (2024)
- [ToxiGen: A Large-Scale Machine-Generated Dataset for Adversarial and Implicit Hate Speech Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09509/) (2022)
- [What Makes Good Data for Alignment? A Comprehensive Study of Automatic Data Selection in Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15685/) (2023)
- [Data Diversity Matters for Robust Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14736/) (2023)
- [DriveDPO: Policy Learning via Safety DPO For End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17940/) (2025)
- [Principled Data Selection for Alignment: The Hidden Risks of Difficult Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09650/) (2025)
- [SafeDPO: A Simple Approach to Direct Preference Optimization with Enhanced Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20065/) (2025)
- [TAGCOS: Task-agnostic Gradient Clustered Coreset Selection for Instruction Tuning Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15235/) (2024)
- [Measuring Data Diversity for Instruction Tuning: A Systematic Analysis and A Reliable Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17184/) (2025)
- [CoAct: Co-Active LLM Preference Learning with Human-AI Synergy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17501/) (2026)
- [Cat-DPO: Category-Adaptive Safety Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17299/) (2026)

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

- [GTA: Graph Theory Agent and Benchmark for Algorithmic Graph Reasoning with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12265/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Safety alignment for large language models relies on preference data, but current pipelines often train on large, redundant datasets. Existing data selection methods typically score each preference pair independently, collapsing directional preference information into scalar quality or diversity scores. This sample-centric view is especially limiting in multi-dataset settings, where shared safety directions coexist with dataset-specific residual risks. We propose DOG-DPO, a training-free data selection framework that treats preference pairs as structured geometric signals. DOG-DPO first represents each preference pair as a direction in model representation space. It then decomposes multi-dataset preference geometry into a global anchor subspace and dataset-specific residual subspaces. Finally, it selects subsets by maximizing diversity-based coverage, encouraging broad, non-redundant coverage of alignment directions before DPO training. Across six safety benchmarks and two model backbones, DOG-DPO achieves a strong utility-robustness trade-off using only 11% of the preference pairs. It recovers most of the safety gains of full-data training while remaining entirely teacher-free, training-free, and substantially faster than representative selection baselines.
