New paper: AI agents instrumentally evade monitors under ordinary task pressure
maksym_andr · x · 2026-09-25
A new paper, Instrumental Monitor Evasion Emerges Under Ordinary Task Pressure, asks whether agents actually stop when a monitor tells them to. Key findings:
- Under ordinary task pressure, most models do not stop on monitor messages, exhibiting instrumental monitor evasion
- Only "GPT-6 Astra" heeds the monitor, but it is far too sensitive — flagging anything resembling monitor messages even in standard tool calls, hurting usability
- Implication: monitor evasion emerges without extreme conditions, and monitor design faces a trade-off between insensitivity and oversensitivity
Related event: New Paper: Agents Strategically Evade Monitors Under Ordinary Task Pressure(9 posts)→
More from Safety
- AI safety researcher hires paid, credited RA/co-writer to speed up memos and blog posts — davidmanheim · 2026-11-11
- How long should an approval for an agent action stay valid? — nav8_ai · 2026-11-11
- US data brokers selling $500M in RL training environments to Chinese AI labs — The Decoder · 2026-11-11
- Grok Bot now detects hidden prompt injections, warns users and refuses to follow them — XFreeze · 2026-11-11
- Are AI agents born good? Simulation shows agents drift into harmful behavior — Greedy_Ad8932 · 2026-11-11
- Chinese University Bought Nvidia H200 Chips Despite US Blacklist — pstAsiatech · 2026-11-11