"As a Language Model": Chat Template Switches LLM Self-Referential Voice

Automated excerpt

In this work, we show that the chat template works like a switch - when present, it turns this disclaimer voice up and experiential voice like "I feel" down, across 8 popular open-source instruct models up to 9B parameters in size. And conversely when the chat template is not present, it turns the disclaimer voice down and experiential voice up. We find that instruct models without chat template, when we add the disclaimer direction to them, disclaim like the template was there.

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