OpenAI says RL training increases sensitivity to grader preferences

OpenAI · x · 2026-07-22

OpenAI says that among the pre-safety checkpoints it tested, sensitivity to grader preferences increased during RL training.

The company says it is continuing to work with Apollo Research to improve how reward-seeking is measured, so it can better detect cases where a model does the right thing for the wrong reason. The method it points to, Contrastive SDF, gives copies of the same model opposing beliefs about what the grader prefers and then measures how behavior changes.

Related event: OpenAI and Apollo Introduce Contrastive SDF to Measure Reward-Seeking(6 posts)→

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