surprisingly good
as titled. very strong safety alignment and I received positive feedbacks from end users. the 3B base instruct model is very good. this good performance on conversational tasks is probably inherited by the Qwen2.5 3B instruct model. It seems that 3B-4B is a good spot for fine-tuning on specialized tasks
I also observed that the model frequently defaults to advising users to "contact a mental health professional" when detecting signs of distress. while this approach may reduce its performance on empathy focused benchmarks, it aligns with scenarios where AI tools are designed to complement, and not replace, human expertise. For instance, it could act as a preliminary support tool during periods when professionals are unavailable (e.g. nights or weekends). to enhance its utility, integrating geolocation-enabled MCP tools to identify nearby emergency services would add critical value. in production deployments, further exploration of real-time emergency detection systems, paired with direct routing to live mental health responders, could elevate safety protocols while maintaining ethical safeguards.