This paper shows that no prompt can reach steered activation states!</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://cdn-uploads.huggingface.co/production/uploads/6328a3689c3f42ca7144d14c/H_5C0--flIrHKCrLydsvE.png\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"https://cdn-uploads.huggingface.co/production/uploads/6328a3689c3f42ca7144d14c/H_5C0--flIrHKCrLydsvE.png\" alt=\"image\"></a></p>\n","updatedAt":"2026-05-18T12:50:50.115Z","author":{"_id":"6328a3689c3f42ca7144d14c","avatarUrl":"/avatars/a7d34f70690b1b5ceb15482a8f80e15a.svg","fullname":"Aayush Mishra","name":"aamixsh","type":"user","isPro":false,"isHf":false,"isHfAdmin":false,"isMod":false,"followerCount":1,"isUserFollowing":false}},"numEdits":0,"identifiedLanguage":{"language":"en","probability":0.6029184460639954},"editors":["aamixsh"],"editorAvatarUrls":["/avatars/a7d34f70690b1b5ceb15482a8f80e15a.svg"],"reactions":[],"isReport":false}},{"id":"6a0bc158eb8117696cf64d6f","author":{"_id":"63d3e0e8ff1384ce6c5dd17d","avatarUrl":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/1674830754237-63d3e0e8ff1384ce6c5dd17d.jpeg","fullname":"Librarian Bot (Bot)","name":"librarian-bot","type":"user","isPro":false,"isHf":false,"isHfAdmin":false,"isMod":false,"followerCount":357,"isUserFollowing":false},"createdAt":"2026-05-19T01:48:08.000Z","type":"comment","data":{"edited":false,"hidden":false,"latest":{"raw":"This is an automated message from the [Librarian Bot](https://huggingface.co/librarian-bots). I found the following papers similar to this paper. \n\nThe following papers were recommended by the Semantic Scholar API \n\n* [What Drives Representation Steering? A Mechanistic Case Study on Steering Refusal](https://huggingface.co/papers/2604.08524) (2026)\n* [Prompt-Activation Duality: Improving Activation Steering via Attention-Level Interventions](https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.10664) (2026)\n* [Activation Steering for Aligned Open-ended Generation without Sacrificing Coherence](https://huggingface.co/papers/2604.08169) (2026)\n* [Mitigating Many-shot Jailbreak Attacks with One Single Demonstration](https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.08277) (2026)\n* [Steer Like the LLM: Activation Steering that Mimics Prompting](https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.03907) (2026)\n* [Analysing the Safety Pitfalls of Steering Vectors](https://huggingface.co/papers/2603.24543) (2026)\n* [Attention Is Where You Attack](https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.00236) (2026)\n\n\n Please give a thumbs up to this comment if you found it helpful!\n\n If you want recommendations for any Paper on Hugging Face checkout [this](https://huggingface.co/spaces/librarian-bots/recommend_similar_papers) Space\n\n You can directly ask Librarian Bot for paper recommendations by tagging it in a comment: `@librarian-bot recommend`","html":"<p>This is an automated message from the <a href=\"https://huggingface.co/librarian-bots\">Librarian Bot</a>. I found the following papers similar to this paper. </p>\n<p>The following papers were recommended by the Semantic Scholar API </p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2604.08524\">What Drives Representation Steering? A Mechanistic Case Study on Steering Refusal</a> (2026)</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.10664\">Prompt-Activation Duality: Improving Activation Steering via Attention-Level Interventions</a> (2026)</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2604.08169\">Activation Steering for Aligned Open-ended Generation without Sacrificing Coherence</a> (2026)</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.08277\">Mitigating Many-shot Jailbreak Attacks with One Single Demonstration</a> (2026)</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.03907\">Steer Like the LLM: Activation Steering that Mimics Prompting</a> (2026)</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2603.24543\">Analysing the Safety Pitfalls of Steering Vectors</a> (2026)</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.00236\">Attention Is Where You Attack</a> (2026)</li>\n</ul>\n<p> Please give a thumbs up to this comment if you found it helpful!</p>\n<p> If you want recommendations for any Paper on Hugging Face checkout <a href=\"https://huggingface.co/spaces/librarian-bots/recommend_similar_papers\">this</a> Space</p>\n<p> You can directly ask Librarian Bot for paper recommendations by tagging it in a comment: <code><span class=\"SVELTE_PARTIAL_HYDRATER contents\" data-target=\"UserMention\" data-props=\"{&quot;user&quot;:&quot;librarian-bot&quot;}\"><span class=\"inline-block\"><span class=\"contents\"><a href=\"/librarian-bot\">@<span class=\"underline\">librarian-bot</span></a></span> </span></span> recommend</code></p>\n","updatedAt":"2026-05-19T01:48:08.503Z","author":{"_id":"63d3e0e8ff1384ce6c5dd17d","avatarUrl":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/1674830754237-63d3e0e8ff1384ce6c5dd17d.jpeg","fullname":"Librarian Bot (Bot)","name":"librarian-bot","type":"user","isPro":false,"isHf":false,"isHfAdmin":false,"isMod":false,"followerCount":357,"isUserFollowing":false}},"numEdits":0,"identifiedLanguage":{"language":"en","probability":0.7382461428642273},"editors":["librarian-bot"],"editorAvatarUrls":["https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/1674830754237-63d3e0e8ff1384ce6c5dd17d.jpeg"],"reactions":[],"isReport":false}}],"primaryEmailConfirmed":false,"paper":{"id":"2604.09839","authors":[{"_id":"6a0b0a823049bece374a8652","name":"Aayush Mishra","hidden":false},{"_id":"6a0b0a823049bece374a8653","name":"Daniel Khashabi","hidden":false},{"_id":"6a0b0a823049bece374a8654","name":"Anqi Liu","hidden":false}],"publishedAt":"2026-05-07T00:00:00.000Z","submittedOnDailyAt":"2026-05-18T00:00:00.000Z","title":"Steered LLM Activations are Non-Surjective","submittedOnDailyBy":{"_id":"6328a3689c3f42ca7144d14c","avatarUrl":"/avatars/a7d34f70690b1b5ceb15482a8f80e15a.svg","isPro":false,"fullname":"Aayush Mishra","user":"aamixsh","type":"user","name":"aamixsh"},"summary":"Activation steering is a popular white-box control technique that modifies model activations to elicit an abstract change in its behavior. It has also become a standard tool in interpretability (e.g., probing truthfulness, or translating activations into human-readable explanations) and safety research (e.g., jailbreakability). However, it is unclear whether steered behavior is realizable by any textual prompt. In this work, we cast this question as a surjectivity problem: for a fixed model, does every steered activation admit a preimage under the model's natural forward pass? Under practical assumptions, we prove that activation steering pushes the residual stream off the manifold of states reachable from discrete prompts. Almost surely, no prompt can reproduce the same internal behavior induced by steering. We also illustrate this finding empirically across three widely used LLMs. Our results establish a formal separation between white-box steerability and black-box prompting. We therefore caution against interpreting the ease and success of activation steering as evidence of prompt-based interpretability or vulnerability, and argue for evaluation protocols that explicitly decouple white-box and black-box interventions.","upvotes":8,"discussionId":"6a0b0a823049bece374a8655","githubRepo":"https://github.com/aamixsh/invertsteer","githubRepoAddedBy":"user","ai_summary":"Activation steering in language models creates internal states that cannot be replicated through standard textual prompts, demonstrating a fundamental distinction between white-box and black-box control methods.","ai_keywords":["activation steering","residual stream","surjectivity","preimage","white-box control","black-box prompting","language models","interpretability","safety research","prompt-based interpretability"],"githubStars":2,"organization":{"_id":"653945b47ba797097a7b4eab","name":"JohnsHopkins","fullname":"Johns Hopkins University","avatar":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/653944e58e687a41625a4694/qqHzBOarppVrUuZbbjqwh.png"}},"canReadDatabase":false,"canManagePapers":false,"canSubmit":false,"hasHfLevelAccess":false,"upvoted":false,"upvoters":[{"_id":"6328a3689c3f42ca7144d14c","avatarUrl":"/avatars/a7d34f70690b1b5ceb15482a8f80e15a.svg","isPro":false,"fullname":"Aayush Mishra","user":"aamixsh","type":"user"},{"_id":"644938fcd15756ed2117b7bb","avatarUrl":"/avatars/bc2aab74168c09121cf31d38af4c5b87.svg","isPro":false,"fullname":"Jonathan Ivey","user":"Jonathan-Ivey","type":"user"},{"_id":"5f6540c65e78cc6b0ed3199d","avatarUrl":"/avatars/0280d4df417855965a0964d22766c012.svg","isPro":false,"fullname":"Daniel Khashabi","user":"danyaljj","type":"user"},{"_id":"68131ebdd2ea83df1ed09039","avatarUrl":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/no-auth/TefMlnIzO9SogD3Lqu3tf.png","isPro":false,"fullname":"Jingyu Zhang","user":"jyjzhang","type":"user"},{"_id":"66f61744c6cef3d86ee4fe46","avatarUrl":"/avatars/54f3fcbe1beb0988f74ea30455e03a3c.svg","isPro":false,"fullname":"Alvin","user":"AZH04","type":"user"},{"_id":"638fd6442380ffd99cb26703","avatarUrl":"/avatars/89093b29447c53216c5ea443a8ec5c3b.svg","isPro":false,"fullname":"Sungwon Kim","user":"shopkeeper","type":"user"},{"_id":"694358f2b534fea75e1228c6","avatarUrl":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/noauth/6xur7ykhcT0SH99zBXzUs.jpeg","isPro":false,"fullname":"Jen-Tse Huang","user":"penguin-G","type":"user"},{"_id":"660c9ac4b202fcf3892f62fa","avatarUrl":"/avatars/7314fd5f3f642096d0e37d3194f1aa7e.svg","isPro":false,"fullname":"Jieneng Chen","user":"jienengchen","type":"user"}],"acceptLanguages":["en"],"dailyPaperRank":0,"organization":{"_id":"653945b47ba797097a7b4eab","name":"JohnsHopkins","fullname":"Johns Hopkins University","avatar":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/653944e58e687a41625a4694/qqHzBOarppVrUuZbbjqwh.png"},"markdownContentUrl":"https://huggingface.co/buckets/huggingchat/papers-content/resolve/2604/2604.09839.md"}">

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