Lying Is Just a Phase: The Hidden Alignment Transition in Language Model Scaling
The paper discusses the relationship between reasoning and truthfulness in language models as they scale. It identifies a critical scale where capabilities transition from anticorrelation to cooperation. The findings suggest that factors like architecture and data curation significantly influence this transition.
- ▪The study measures the coupling between reasoning and truthfulness across 63 base models from 16 families.
- ▪A critical scale, approximately 3.5 billion parameters, marks a regime change in model capabilities.
- ▪Data curation and architectural innovations can independently shift the critical scale for model performance.
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Computer Science > Machine Learning arXiv:2605.18838 (cs) [Submitted on 13 May 2026] Title:Lying Is Just a Phase: The Hidden Alignment Transition in Language Model Scaling Authors:Adil Amin View a PDF of the paper titled Lying Is Just a Phase: The Hidden Alignment Transition in Language Model Scaling, by Adil Amin View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Scaling laws predict loss from compute but not how capabilities interact. We measure the coupling between reasoning and truthfulness across 63 base models from 16 families and find a regime change invisible to loss curves: below a family-dependent critical scale $N_c$, capabilities anticorrelate; above it, they cooperate.
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