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While activation steering (AS) promises a cheap, fast, and controllable alternative to the two existing post-training methods, current AS techniques require hand-crafted prompt pairs or labor-intensive feature annotation, making them more inconvenient than the plug-and-play methods such as Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT). We introduce Painless Activation Steering (PAS), a family of fully automated methods that make AS readily usable with any given labeled dataset, with no need for prompt construction, feature labeling, or human intervention. 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We introduce Painless Activation Steering (PAS), a family of fully automated methods that make AS readily usable with any given labeled dataset, with no need for prompt construction, feature labeling, or human intervention. We evaluate PAS on three open-weight models (Llama3.1-8B-Instruct, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-8B, and No","title":"Painless Activation Steering: An Automated, Lightweight Approach for Post-Training Large Language Models","vendor":"arxiv_cs_ai"},"confidence":{"method":"deterministic"},"decision":"POSITIVE","issued_at":"2026-05-18T04:43:11Z","notes":"Spider vendor_press (news) news.vendor_press.v1","object":{"captured_by":"crovia.spider.vendor_press","primary_source_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22739"},"predecessors":[],"schema":"crovia.axiom.v1","signature":"ed25519:b7533034e8e60e970f77794aab8314a19f784075ef9fa111b2884d8d4270a13b3885f794f0b430d9eee31f9cc5f14fb11facd95b859921c5903092e674d2890e","signer":"crovia.substrate","subject":{"observed_at":"2026-05-18T04:43:11Z","source_collector":"spider:vendor_press","target_id":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22739"},"tsa":{"authority":"crovia.substrate.bootstrap","rfc3161_token":"{\"kind\":\"crovia.bootstrap.tsa\",\"source_jsonl\":\"/opt/crovia/spider/data/news/vendor_press_v1.jsonl\",\"source_seal_merkle_root\":\"spider_vendor_press_v1\",\"upgrade_path\":\"Sessione H \\u2014 OpenTimestamps weekly anchor\"}"},"zk_mode":"clear","zk_proof":null},"ledger":{"leaf_hash":"afbb884a31ec88bcd9237b6906f31f08dd14cb21636216c095406348c967d4c5","leaf_index":140758,"ledger_path":"/opt/crovia/substrate/axiom_ledger.jsonl"},"merkle_proof":{"hash_alg":"sha256","leaf_prefix":"0x00","node_prefix":"0x01","odd_leaf_rule":"duplicate_last","path":[{"sibling":"2d8d23d39584af8915c4d4737859d1a0f2d2e4b6be061fb0018d9df9ad13d0a4","side":"right"},{"sibling":"ae2cbfa9cfa150f288478ee76c000993823627b19fff9ea6e162c474e4b7dc87","side":"left"},{"sibling":"b9402fc644de4e4b2ebbb3f3f26f4162756b332360af043b6b828d70307760cb","side":"left"},{"sibling":"0c00d04054f9190d2aa88ee5e078775fc186f1a89d6287828c48feaa2fad27a9","side":"right"},{"sibling":"e7dcdf5f72967c5581e64093537604af61437e20e28507378c94220b5290889f","side":"left"},{"sibling":"195278f3c49cd4ed79b69f218ba282c8c3b02923aea9de624cbd7796075a1b5d","side":"right"},{"sibling":"518d2c79e4bbff1e18ea05bbb3663a3fb58b3b1682a658f34e706ea23e091089","side":"left"},{"sibling":"30c60828b6b0ade79197e585b88c06ccf4f348c1e62fbf6710d89ae2c2e9dcfb","side":"left"},{"sibling":"6bedf73520cf3dd8758d8bdedf3be245de9aea97abd42934aae25539176ae1b2","side":"left"},{"sibling":"07abc3bad689e74e6304772503dc9372a118e6f66883b8e88c43414efddac063","side":"right"},{"sibling":"28b78fb112bcf26b6801664db97eb8f52a9bccbf0a7ae6766e11845d443692df","side":"left"},{"sibling":"68d0a4634c1460a19c92edd9480df3aa733b814463e7420d1e14471bf61b2f83","side":"right"},{"sibling":"8af64f275b862349aa3bbb9d5cd7fa9a7fdd5620af3bf1b36b2a4519b0b53bdf","side":"right"},{"sibling":"8f4c0fbe56b6c010fbb8c782ebcd478079bb3f991d8704e2534209a075d9163c","side":"left"},{"sibling":"b98c2afadb358e5387e88f19588f8343a81b488d9b44a6f7e57a032db3a1b030","side":"right"},{"sibling":"11b0c1591747f09f7c8971a6caa19befcd81317ca9dfd417b143234df4e10c79","side":"right"},{"sibling":"87206f3bcc342797c990d87f7235c01f78d32ca59cfaf8ad18d71afc879ba477","side":"right"},{"sibling":"d841ad93efda0869e5eb97678f348f03f5caab4353e05ff4bf18f47fb945b822","side":"left"}]},"schema":"crovia.axiom_proof.v1","seal":{"first_collector_run_id":"","first_receipt_hash":"","jsonl_path":"/opt/crovia/substrate/axiom_ledger.jsonl","key_id":"430895f101d38164","last_collector_run_id":"","last_receipt_hash":"","leaf_count":140892,"merkle_root":"6cca56ead155990456b8a014cc50bddbe710f409b26e3d1bfa6fb12b0bfcf6bf","public_key_hex":"cf742e26f75669dc673cb5c0786a1ae23ae8ca19c347317192ce40c28a7ff25c","run_id":"hourly_json_retrofit_20260518T053701Z","schema":"crovia.seal.v1","seal_family_version":"crovia-seal-family/1","seal_kind":"substrate_batch","sealed_at":"2026-05-18T05:37:30Z","sig_algorithm":"ed25519","signature":"1e1135f7595f79b14fb11f5fa81a2e17ad31b11b44b427a5e40a7d511cd86447daf492babd368ab571cf26404c8c74c450d460130fca4b064eb2760367489a0f","signer_version":"1.1.0"},"trust_root":{"key_id":"430895f101d38164","public_key_hex":"cf742e26f75669dc673cb5c0786a1ae23ae8ca19c347317192ce40c28a7ff25c","signature_algorithm":"ed25519","url":"/registry/canon/TRUST_ROOT.md"},"verifier":{"spec":"/registry/canon/AXIOM_RECEIPT_v1.md","url":"/v/axm_c4c0b6e9c80953adf7ef658182554049ad975065fae02304121ae409ceb25e22"}}