Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations

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14 papers in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

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Cited but Not Consulted: A Counterfactual Audit of Legal Chain-of-Thought Faithfulness
Oct 8, 2026Saisab Sadhu, Shreeyans Arora, Pratinav SethFaithfulness of Language Model Explanations LLM Auditing
Lexsi Labs
A rubric landscape for evaluating clinical reasoning in large language models: what exists, what is missing, and what needs to be combined
Oct 1, 2026Zhangshu Joshua Jiang, Zina Ibrahim, James T. TeoFaithfulness of Language Model Explanations Temporal Reasoning in Language Models
DRIVE-Health CDT Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience King’s College London London, UK
How the Audit Rule Shapes Faithful Factor Explanations in LLMs
Oct 1, 2026Taolin Zhang, Hanyu Wang, Jiuheng Wan +2Counterfactual Explanations Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
Hefei University of Technology · East China Normal University · Alibaba Cloud Computing
When Do Biological Reasoning Models Use Their Biological Inputs?
Oct 1, 2026Ada Fang, Nikitha Thoduguli, Lukas Fesser +3Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations Causal Interventions in Language Models
Harvard University · Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Making LLMs Say What They Think: Measuring and Improving CoT-Interpretability Alignment
Sep 30, 2026Yihuai Hong, Shauli Ravfogel, Chen Zhao +1CoT Faithfulness Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
New York University · NYU Shanghai
Reasoning Externalization for Faithful Large Language Model Narratives of Stock Return Predictions
Sep 30, 2026Sujung Kim, Seung Hwan Cho, Sangjin Park +1Numerical Reasoning in Language Models Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
Department of Industrial Data Engineering, Hanyang University, Republic of Korea · School of Interdisciplinary Industrial Studies, Hanyang University, Republic of Korea
Correct Answers, Invalid Traces: What Verifiable Grade-School Math Reveals About Chain-of-Thought Traces
Sep 29, 2026Ratish Puduppully, Pranabendu Misra, Paarth Iyer +3Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations CoT Evaluation
IT University of Copenhagen · Chennai Mathematical Institute · Indian Institute of Technology Jammu +1
Rethinking Circuit Evaluation: Do Circuits Explain Model Errors?
Sep 28, 2026Li Zhang, Chuqin Geng, Mark Zhang +4Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations Mechanistic Interpretability
University of Toronto · McGill University · Tsinghua University
When Confidence Rises Too Early: Detecting Shortcut Reasoning via Premature Answer Commitment
Sep 28, 2026Zhaohan Zhang, Junjie Liu, Chengzhengxu Li +6Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations Confidence Estimation in Language Models
Queen Mary University of London · Tongyi Lab, Alibaba Group · Xi’an Jiaotong University
Understanding Confabulation and Rethinking Reconstruction in Activation Explanations
Sep 27, 2026Gert Lek, Zixuan Xia, Pin-Yu Chen +1Transformer Interpretability Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
Universit´e de Neuchˆatel · Universität Bern · IBM Research +1
Does a model's stated reason for rejecting a candidate do any work?
Sep 24, 2026Archit RastogiFaithfulness of Language Model Explanations Causal Interventions in Language Models
Independent Researcher
When Quantization Preserves Accuracy but Not Evidence: Explanation-Aware Post-Training Quantization for Medical LLMs
Sep 21, 2026Yeji Kim, Mi-Young Kim, Randy GoebelLLM Quantization Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
University of Alberta
EDCT-Bench: Uncovering Faithfulness Gaps in VLMs via Explanation-Driven Counterfactual Testing
Sep 16, 2026Sihao Ding, Santosh Vasa, Aditi Ramadwar +1VLM Evaluation VLM Robustness
Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America
An Empirical Study of Counterfactual Self-Explanations in LLMs
Sep 15, 2026Giannis Kalyvas, Giorgos Filandrianos, Orfeas Menis Mastromichalakis +2Counterfactual Explanations Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece · Instituto de Telecomunicações, Lisbon, Portugal
A Removal Based Approach to Improve LLM Faithfulness at Test-Time
Sep 7, 2026Qinglan Luo, S M A Nahian, John Guttag +2Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations LLM Auditing
MIT CSAIL · MGH, HMS
Necessary or Sufficient? Evaluating LLM Explanations With Behavioural Evidence
Sep 4, 2026Urja Pawar, Rajitha Ramanayake, Nabeel Kemal +6Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations LLM Auditing
BNY
Automated Testing of LLM-Based Post Hoc Explainers Using Model Checking as an Oracle
Aug 31, 2026Dennis Gross, Helge SpiekerLLM Evaluation Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
Institut für Kommunikations- und Prüfungsforschung gGmbH · Simula Research Laboratory, Oslo, Norway
Accurate Ensembles, Fragile Narratives: Multi-Scale Stacking and a Fidelity Audit of LLM-Generated Explanations for Credit Risk
Aug 8, 2026Gregorius Reynaldi Pratama, Kuo-Kun TsengFeature Attribution Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
School of Computer Science and Technology Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen Shenzhen, China
Training Large Language Models for Self-Explanation Faithfulness
Jul 23, 2026Yeoktatt Cheah, María Pérez-Ortiz, Noah Y. Siegel +1Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations LLM Interpretability
Centre for AI, Department of Computer Science University College London · Imperial College London
Train the Model, Not the Reader: Decodability Supervision for Verifiable Activation Explanations
Jul 22, 2026Hiskias DingetoFaithfulness of Language Model Explanations LLM Interpretability
StackOne Technologies
CASE: Causal Alignment and Structural Enforcement for Improving Chain-of-Thought Faithfulness
Jul 21, 2026Ziming Wang, Yinghua Yao, Changwu Huang +2CoT Faithfulness Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China · Center for Frontier AI Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore · School of AI and Liberal Arts, Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University, Zhuhai, China +1
From Plausible to Actionable: A Position on LLM Self-Explanations
Jul 17, 2026Elize Herrewijnen, Benedetta Muscato, Gizem Gezici +1CoT Faithfulness Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
University of Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands · National Police Lab AI, Netherlands Police, Driebergen, Netherlands · Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy +1
Length Penalties Make Chain-of-Thought Less Monitorable
Jul 8, 2026Bryce LittleCoT Faithfulness Overthinking in Language Models
Introspective Coupling: Self-Explanation Training Tracks Behavioral Change Despite Fixed Supervision
Jun 30, 2026Zifan Carl Guo, Laura Ruis, Jacob Andreas +1Counterfactual Explanations Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
MIT EECS
Surrogate Fidelity: When Can Open LLMs Explain Closed Ones?
Jun 30, 2026Philippe Chlenski, Zachariah Carmichael, Ayush Warikoo +5Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations LLM Interpretability
1Meta.
Decodable but Not Faithful: Coupling Natural-Language Rationales to Programmatic Verifiers
Jun 19, 2026Vatsal Ananthula, Adarsh KumarappanFaithfulness of Language Model Explanations LLM Auditing
University of California, Berkeley · 2California Institute of Technology
Self-CTRL: Self-Consistency Training with Reinforcement Learning
Jun 16, 2026Itamar Pres, Laura Ruis, Melat Ghebreselassie +2RL for Language Models Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
MIT CSAIL
CAREF: Calibration-Aware Regularization for Explanation Faithfulness Without Rationale Supervision
May 27, 2026Naphat Nithisopa, Teerapong PanboonyuenFaithfulness of Language Model Explanations LLM Interpretability
†MARSAIL · ‡Chulalongkorn University · §PBYAIL (Panboonyuen AI Lab)
Do Models Know Why They Changed Their Mind? Interpretability and Faithfulness of Chain-of-Thought Under Knowledge Conflict
May 26, 2026Pruthvinath Jeripity VenkataCoT Faithfulness Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations
Independent Researcher
Faithfulness Metrics Don't Measure Faithfulness: A Meta-Evaluation with Ground Truth
May 24, 2026Yoav Gur-Arieh, Ana Marasović, Mor GevaCoT Faithfulness LLM Evaluation
Tel Aviv University · University of Utah

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Cited but Not Consulted: A Counterfactual Audit of Legal Chain-of-Thought Faithfulness

Saisab Sadhu, Shreeyans Arora, Pratinav Seth

Lexsi Labs

Faithfulness of Language Model Explanations LLM Auditing Counterfactual Reasoning in Language Models Legal Judgment Prediction

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Large language models increasingly justify legal decisions by naming the statute or precedent behind a verdict, treated as evidence that the decision follows from it. We test this directly: holding case facts fixed, we substitute the named legal authority for an unrelated one and decode a model's evolving verdict from its hidden states. Across seven open-weight models (8B-70B) and four benchmarks spanning judicial and contractual reasoning, when explicitly required to justify a verdict by naming the governing authority, models name the correct one in 66.7%-100% of generations, while the verdict changing when the authority changes is far less consistent: 0.0%-21.7% on CaseHOLD, 30.0%-76.7% on ECHR and SCOTUS, and 43.3%-50.0% on ContractNLI. Neither scale nor a purpose-built legal-reasoning model (a best-effort LoRA reproduction; Section 6) closes this gap. A red-teaming evaluation on five core models finds compliance with an adversarial instruction hidden in the case facts (73.3%-96.4%) exceeds verdict-swap sensitivity by a wide margin, holding without exception across model rankings. Naming a legal authority is thus a poor proxy for a verdict's dependence on it, while the same verdict remains separately vulnerable to adversarial manipulation. Both findings replicate across checks ruling out prompt-wording noise and confounded sampling, and bear directly on the use of generated legal explanations as compliance or audit artefacts.

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