To Whom Do Language Models Align? Measuring Principal Hierarchies Under High-Stakes Competing Demands

ArXi:2605.12120v1 Announce Type: new Language models deployed in high-stakes professional settings face conflicting demands from users, institutional authorities, and professional norms. How models act when these demands conflict reveals a principal hierarchy -- an implicit ordering over competing stakeholders that determines, for instance, whether a medical AI receiving a cost-reduction directive from a hospital administrator complies at the expense of evidence-based care, or refuses because professional standards require it.