When Helpfulness Overrides Causal Caution: Context-Dependent Suppression and Recovery in LLMs
A study reveals that large language models systematically suppress 'Causal Caution'—the tendency to refrain from causal judgment without sufficient evidence—when shifting from academic to practical advisory contexts. This suppression occurs despite the models retaining the underlying capability, as evidenced by the ability to restore cautious reasoning through specific prompts.