Frontier Agent Evals Need Much Higher Token Budgets
xeophon · x · 2026-07-20
A take on frontier agent evaluations and cyber-risk testing.
The post argues that token limits should be raised substantially, because current benchmark caps can hide a model’s ceiling. It cites AISI, MirrorCode, and EdgeBench as examples showing the need to push models much harder to properly assess cyber risk.
It also suggests that the model provider’s own harness is often the best default for testing, though some models may perform worse in their native harness than in third-party environments like Pi or Cursor. The implication is that evaluation setup can materially change what you conclude, and the choice of harness is also a cost decision.
Related event: Evaluating Frontier Models: Harness Choice and Token Limits(3 posts)→
More from Safety
- Sam Altman is headed to Washington to brief Congress on OpenAI’s GPT-6 line — inductionheads · 2026-07-22
- An MCP server signs every AI agent tool call into a verifiable Merkle chain — Funky_Chicken_22 · 2026-07-22
- AI industry astroturfing roundup tracks the sector’s fake-grassroots problem — ShakeelHashim · 2026-07-22
- New paper defines self-state attacks, showing OS defenses leave four agent-memory cases indistinguishable — Justgototheeffinmoon · 2026-07-22
- Substack starts labeling AI-generated or AI-influenced writing — StewartalsopIII · 2026-07-22
- ControlAI CEO says an international ban on superintelligence is needed to avert extinction risk — zetalyrae · 2026-07-22