Google DeepMind study finds stronger moral arguments do not improve model judgmentMachine translation

New Google DeepMind paper finds that training a model to write better moral arguments makes it more decisive, but no better at moral judgment. LLMs are more and more often asked for moral advice. A model that keeps its answer when the options are reordered is often taken as a sign of sound judgment. They trained Gemma-4 4B with reinforcement learning to argue dilemmas taken from classic novels. The model judged its own arguments in pairs, and the winners set the reward. Answer flips when options were swapped fell from 14.3% to 6.6% on ambiguous MoralChoice cases. Yet siding with the user barely moved, from 45.3% to 44.0%, and accuracy on moral fables dropped from 56.5% to 53.4%. If you evaluate models for advice or judgment tasks, test consistency and correctness separately, since a steadier model can still be wrong.