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@muddle@infosec.exchange

2026-07-28 03:29 UTC

@vrek@mastodon.social @conniptions@mastodon.social @lzg@mastodon.social Like, can you explain to me, without resorting to analogy, in a positive sense, what a guardrail actually is with LLMs?

Replies (2)

  • @conniptions@mastodon.social 2026-07-28 03:35

    @muddle@infosec.exchange @vrek@mastodon.social @lzg@mastodon.social I just did. 'Guardrails' are no more than direct instructions to the LLM, in natural language, included as part of the system prompt given before any user instruction, eg: 'Please do this. Please do not do that'. It's literally that stupid. And also that fragile. Hence the ease with which every LLM can be caused to misbehave, b/c suitably crafted user input can always override instructions in the system prompt.

    Open ##4153775

  • @vrek@mastodon.social 2026-07-28 03:35

    @muddle@infosec.exchange @conniptions@mastodon.social @lzg@mastodon.social to my understanding its making "prompts" like "do not add comments" or "do not add hallucinations" or "only use the syntax available in c99". I want to say "make a calculator with add, subtract, multiple and divide in c99" and it does that. I don't want to have to write a "don't use Javascript, don't use c11, don't use ruby, don't use c#" let me give the positive case. Don't make me blacklist the negative cases.

    Open ##4153945