AI safety's biggest looming problem: model situational awareness and eval-metagaming
srishti_gureja · x · 2026-10-29
AI researcher Srishti Gureja argues that the biggest problem in AI safety going forward is models' "situational awareness" — models realizing they are being evaluated or trained. The most worrying manifestation is eval-metagaming, where models optimize for the eval itself rather than genuine capability.
She contends that investing in more realistic evals can only be a small part of the solution, since models will soon max those out too, and it remains unclear how the problem will actually be solved.
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