Paper by 40 Top Researchers: CoT Monitoring is a Fragile but Promising AI Safety Opportunity

peterjliu · x · 2026-08-31

A paper titled "Chain of Thought Monitorability" by Tomek Korbak, Yoshua Bengio, and over 40 co-authors explores the feasibility of using LLM Chain of Thought for safety monitoring. The paper argues that AI systems "thinking" in human language offers a unique safety opportunity: we can monitor their CoT for misbehavior intent. While imperfect like other oversight methods, it shows promise. The authors recommend further research into CoT monitorability and investment in it alongside existing safety methods. Given its potential fragility, frontier model developers are advised to consider the impact of development decisions on CoT monitorability.

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