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<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#570606">UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#570606">COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#570606">PRESENTS</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif;color:#212121">Peter West
</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121;background:white">Assistant Professor</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121">University of British Columbia</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121">Thursday,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>March 6<sup>th</sup>, 2025</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121">1:00PM – 2:00PM CT .<span class="apple-converted-space"> Lunch will be provided at 12:30PM CT
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<b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121">Location :
</span></b><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"> <span style="background:yellow;mso-highlight:yellow">Crerar Library, 5730 S Ellis Ave, 3rd Floor, Room 346</span><span style="color:#212121"><br>
Zoom Link :<span class="apple-converted-space"> <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/uchicago.zoom.us/j/97708787366?pwd=qD9KdtzwGCTPuciAfr6iaap3NubZgy.1*success__;Iw!!BpyFHLRN4TMTrA!74VUK6KY2BEpehA1mfhOzaU_1BZ4flqUMiINJrxWvvaT3boirdBIyRyILmKhPPzw1zxulUGx3Q8sDMmDKSEnxD-Afakd68608ImP$">Click
Here <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;font-weight:normal">
</span></a></span></span></span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121">Title:<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#242424;background:white">Can Helpful Assistants
be Unpredictable? Limits of Aligned LLMs</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121">Abstract</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121">:<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#242424;background:white">The
majority of public-facing language models have undergone some form of alignment--a family of techniques (e.g. reinforcement learning from human feedback) which aim to make models safer, more honest, and better at following instructions. In this talk, I will
investigate the downsides of aligning LLMs. While the process improves model performance across a broad range of benchmark tasks, particularly those for which a "correct" answer is clear, it seems to mitigate some of the most interesting aspects of LLMs, including
unpredictability and generation of text that humans find creative. </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121">Bio</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121">:</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121"> </span></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#212121;background:white"><a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/peterwestai.notion.site/__;!!BpyFHLRN4TMTrA!74VUK6KY2BEpehA1mfhOzaU_1BZ4flqUMiINJrxWvvaT3boirdBIyRyILmKhPPzw1zxulUGx3Q8sDMmDKSEnxD-Afakd69yN7bF3$">Peter</a> is
an Assistant Professor at UBC and a recent postdoc at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI working in Natural Language Processing. His research broadly studies the capabilities and limits of large language models (and other generative AI systems).
His work has been recognized with multiple awards, including best method paper at NAACL 2022, outstanding paper at ACL 2023, and outstanding paper at EMNLP 2023</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">-- <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in">Markayla Epps <br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white">Business Assistant</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"><br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white">Computer Science Department</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"><br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white">The University of Chicago</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"><br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white">5730 S. Ellis - JCL 212</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"><br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white">Chicago, IL 60637</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"><br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white">Markayla@uchicago.edu</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"><br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white">(773) 702-0723</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"><br>
</span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Segoe UI",sans-serif;color:black;border:none windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in;background:white">https://cs.uchicago.edu/</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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