A model spec is a document that describes the intended behavior of an LLM, including rules that the model will follow, default behaviors, and guidance on how to navigate different trade-offs between high-level objectives for the model. Most thinking on model specs that I’m aware of focuses on specifying the desired behavior for a model that is mostly intent-aligned to the model spec. In this post, I discuss how a model spec might be important even if the developer fails to produce a system that is fully aligned with the model spec.
This post was created by Forethought.
I took a look and I think this post is valuable and not just rehashing familiar ground. You discuss how alignment might fail moderately gracefully, and some of the insights there are new to me.
I suggest you put at least a little more of the link post here to make that apparent. Your intro does just provide definitions and doesn’t give much of a hint about the value you offer. A bullet point list of some highlights is one idea.