SafeMERGE: Preserving Safety Alignment in Fine-Tuned Large Language Models via Selective Layer-Wise Model Merging

Evidence card

Claim

Safety-preserving post-fine-tuning methods are being studied because benign fine-tuning can erode safety.

Evidence level

Emerging evidence

Source

https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.17239

Publication date

2025-03-21

Authors or institution

Aladin Djuhera, Swanand Ravindra Kadhe, Farhan Ahmed, Syed Zawad, Holger Boche

System tested

Selective layer-wise merging across fine-tuned LLMs in the reported benchmarks.

Limitations

A mitigation proposal; effectiveness depends on models, tasks, metrics, and implementation.

What the evidence does show

Safety-preserving post-fine-tuning methods are being studied because benign fine-tuning can erode safety.

What the evidence does not show

That SafeMERGE or any single method solves descendant safety inheritance.

Date last reviewed in UTC

2026-06-26T00:00:00Z