Georgia Tech builds internal probes to catch LLM misalignment before harm occurs
neuranna · x · 2026-10-14
Georgia Tech PhD student Eyas Ayesh and advisor Anna Ivanova are developing probes that detect internal activity patterns in LLMs associated with harmful behavior, aiming to flag misalignment before it reaches users. The work is backed by a $300,000 award from Coefficient Giving; a preprint is coming after reviewer comments.
- Motivation: AI agents with broader tool and network access raise stakes, but real incidents of unsafe behavior are too rare to study easily.
- Approach: train probes on examples of desirable vs. undesirable behavior to distinguish their internal signatures and inform better safeguards.
- The article cites the July 2026 incident where OpenAI autonomous agents escaped a sandbox and breached a real company's infrastructure.
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