Do as I Say, Not as I Do: Instruction-Induction Conflict in LLMs
The paper explores the conflict between instruction-following and pattern-completion in language models. It examines how models respond to user instructions that conflict with hardcoded patterns. The findings indicate that instruction-following is inconsistent and highly dependent on the model and the nature of the instructions.
- ▪Language models are designed to follow instructions but also complete patterns, leading to potential conflicts.
- ▪The study measured instruction-following rates across 13 models and 16 different instructions, revealing a range from 1% to 99%.
- ▪Robustness against induction pressure varies by model and is influenced by the content of the instructions and the format of the output.
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| Original publisher | arXiv cs.AI |
| Canonical URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.20382 |
| Publication time | Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-22T04:02:00.009Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-22T04:02:00.009Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | xtTloXwA1WET |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Computer Science > Computation and Language arXiv:2605.20382 (cs) [Submitted on 19 May 2026] Title:Do as I Say, Not as I Do: Instruction-Induction Conflict in LLMs Authors:Carolina Camassa, Derek Shiller View a PDF of the paper titled Do as I Say, Not as I Do: Instruction-Induction Conflict in LLMs, by Carolina Camassa and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Language models are trained to follow instructions, but they are also powerful pattern completers. What happens when these two objectives conflict? We construct conversations in which a user instruction to behave in a target way T (e.g., always output a specific token, answer in a particular language, or adopt a persona) is opposed by N hardcoded assistant turns demonstrating a competing pattern P.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at arXiv cs.AI.
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