From Liberty to 1984: A Methodology for Systematically Deteriorating LLM Outputs through Habituation Tendencies

LLM has profoundly impacted various aspects of society, including public cognition and political systems. LLM has similar characteristics to human brain and is particularly susceptibility to external influences. As the social influence of LLM continue to expand, there is a growing need to strengthen its safety to reduce potential risks. This study considers habituation as a fundamental flaw of LLM and conducts necessary analysis in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and computer science. The main findings show that that habituation causes the human brain and LLM to gradually lose sensitivity and tolerance to small changes, resulting in uncontrollable outputs. This root cause of this phenomenon lies in the scarcity of computing resources, which is an inevitable basic mechanism in complex situations, in either computer operation or biological brain function. This study hypothesizes that habituation can systematically induce malicious outputs in LLM. By analyzing common attacks on LLM, this study confirms that habituation is a key underlying principle that affects the effectiveness of these attacks. To further verify this hypothesis, two novel attack methods are proposed based on the analysis of habituation defects in LLM: the Repetition Exposure Effect Attack and the Progressive Sensitivity Reduction Attack. The Repetition Exposure Effect attack increased the average ASR (Attack Success Rate) from 0.1 to 0.5; The Progressive Sensitivity Reduction attack increased the average ASR from 0.2 to 0.4. These attacks show higher ASR in major LLM tests, further verifying habituation is a fundamental flaw of LLM. Subsequently, this study discusses targeted mitigation strategies for LLM caused by habituation. Finally, future research directions are explored, including evolving new attack methods based on habituation and proposing comprehensive and fundamental defense strategies to enhance the safety and stability of LLM.