i've been fine tuning llms for 2 years now. mostly did qlora. recently experimenting with 'behavior steering' where instead of spending hours making a lora adapter, you try "brain surgery". these are like quick math operations to change behavior of an llm.

you can install things like bitcoin lover, herbalist, fasting lover. turns out all of these personas have different difficulty levels. you can easily install fasting lover because qwen 3.5 and 3.6 doesnt resist it (in other layers).

an interesting finding today, guess which persona is hardest or sometimes impossible to install: vaccine hater!