The paranoid style in AI safety: an adversarial frame can create the adversary you fear
sebkrier · x · 2026-09-12
- morqon critiques a dominant mode in AI safety: a hermeneutic of suspicion where undesirable behavior confirms the threat model while desirable behavior is read as strategic concealment or provisional compliance
- The threat model pre-shapes the experimental conditions generating the evidence; the adversary is presumed in advance
- sebkrier adds that lying to AIs in training/evals is downstream of conceptualizing them as suspicious adversaries, and this ontology forces one to read 'eval awareness' as suspicious when prosaic explanations suffice
- Paranoia can be rational at high risk, but an adversarial frame can create the adversary you fear
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