Survival of the Safest: Towards Secure Prompt Optimization through Interleaved Multi-Objective Evolution

Ankita Sinha, Wendi Cui, Kamalika Das, Jiaxin Zhang


Abstract
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities; however, the optimization of their prompts has historically prioritized performance metrics at the expense of crucial safety and security considerations. To overcome this shortcoming, we introduce “Survival of the Safest” (), an innovative multi-objective prompt optimization framework that enhances both performance and security in LLMs simultaneously. utilizes an interleaved multi-objective evolution strategy, integrating semantic, feedback, and crossover mutations to effectively traverse the prompt landscape. Differing from the computationally demanding Pareto front methods, provides a scalable solution that expedites optimization in complex, high-dimensional discrete search spaces while keeping computational demands low. Our approach accommodates flexible weighting of objectives and generates a pool of optimized candidates, empowering users to select prompts that optimally meet their specific performance and security needs. Experimental evaluations across diverse benchmark datasets affirm ‘s efficacy in delivering high performance and notably enhancing safety and security compared to single-objective methods. This advancement marks a significant stride towards the deployment of LLM systems that are both high-performing and secure across varied industrial applications
Anthology ID:
2024.emnlp-industry.76
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Industry Track
Month:
November
Year:
2024
Address:
Miami, Florida, US
Editors:
Franck Dernoncourt, Daniel Preoţiuc-Pietro, Anastasia Shimorina
Venue:
EMNLP
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
1016–1027
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.emnlp-industry.76
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Ankita Sinha, Wendi Cui, Kamalika Das, and Jiaxin Zhang. 2024. Survival of the Safest: Towards Secure Prompt Optimization through Interleaved Multi-Objective Evolution. In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Industry Track, pages 1016–1027, Miami, Florida, US. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Survival of the Safest: Towards Secure Prompt Optimization through Interleaved Multi-Objective Evolution (Sinha et al., EMNLP 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.emnlp-industry.76.pdf
Poster:
 2024.emnlp-industry.76.poster.pdf