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Slow Decay and Silenced Expression: Iterated Subliminal Trait Transfer in Language-Model Lineages

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Sep 22, 2026 · UTC

Language models are increasingly trained on the outputs of other models, forming chains that we call lineages, in which a trait present in one generation can pass to the next. Prior work on subliminal learning has shown that a teacher's trait can transmit to a student through filtered data carrying none of the trait's content. However, the evidence covers only a single training step. We study whether such a trait holds or fades across lineages. We instill the trait into three copies of Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct and iterate the training step to depth ten from each, reading every generation two ways o

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