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Related papers: Monitoring Reasoning Models for Misbehavior and th…

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Chain-of-thought (CoT) monitoring has been proposed as a promising safety mechanism for detecting misaligned behavior in large language models. However, its reliability remains largely unexplored beyond English and across diverse model…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Eric Onyame , Runtao Zhou , Kowshik Thopalli , Bhavya Kailkhura , Chirag Agarwal

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting improves LLM reasoning but can increase privacy risk by resurfacing personally identifiable information (PII) from the prompt into reasoning traces and outputs, even under policies that instruct the model…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Patrick Ahrend , Tobias Eder , Xiyang Yang , Zhiyi Pan , Georg Groh

Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance on complex tasks by engaging in extended reasoning before producing final answers. Beyond improving abilities, these detailed reasoning traces also create a new…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-08 Shu Yang , Junchao Wu , Xilin Gong , Xuansheng Wu , Derek Wong , Ninghao Liu , Di Wang

Reward hacking--where agents exploit flaws in imperfect reward functions rather than performing tasks as intended--poses risks for AI alignment. Reward hacking has been observed in real training runs, with coding agents learning to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Mia Taylor , James Chua , Jan Betley , Johannes Treutlein , Owain Evans

Chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning is critical for improving the interpretability and reliability of Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs). However, existing training algorithms such as SFT, PPO, and GRPO may not generalize well across unseen…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-31 Guohao Sun , Hang Hua , Jian Wang , Jiebo Luo , Sohail Dianat , Majid Rabbani , Raghuveer Rao , Zhiqiang Tao

Prior work shows that LLMs finetuned on malicious behaviors in a narrow domain (e.g., writing insecure code) can become broadly misaligned -- a phenomenon called emergent misalignment. We investigate whether this extends from conventional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-11 James Chua , Jan Betley , Mia Taylor , Owain Evans

Trustworthy evaluations of dangerous capabilities are increasingly crucial for determining whether an AI system is safe to deploy. One empirically demonstrated threat is sandbagging - the strategic underperformance on evaluations by AI…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-11-03 Chloe Li , Mary Phuong , Noah Y. Siegel

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) typically optimizes for outcome rewards without imposing constraints on intermediate reasoning. This leaves training susceptible to reward hacking, where models exploit loopholes (e.g.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Songtao Wang , Quang Hieu Pham , Fangcong Yin , Xinpeng Wang , Jocelyn Qiaochu Chen , Greg Durrett , Xi Ye

While Chain-of-Thought (CoT) monitoring offers a unique opportunity for AI safety, this opportunity could be lost through shifts in training practices or model architecture. To help preserve monitorability, we propose a pragmatic way to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-29 Scott Emmons , Roland S. Zimmermann , David K. Elson , Rohin Shah

Chain-of-thought (CoT) monitoring is a promising tool for detecting misbehaviors and understanding the motivations of modern reasoning models. However, if models can control what they verbalize in their CoT, it could undermine CoT…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Chen Yueh-Han , Robert McCarthy , Bruce W. Lee , He He , Ian Kivlichan , Bowen Baker , Micah Carroll , Tomek Korbak

Reasoning language models improve performance on complex tasks by generating long chains of thought (CoTs), but this process can also increase harmful outputs in adversarial settings. In this work, we ask whether the long CoTs can be…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-08 Yik Siu Chan , Zheng-Xin Yong , Stephen H. Bach

Monitoring autonomous large language model (LLM) agents for covert malicious behavior is challenging due to delayed, context-dependent, and long-horizon attack patterns. Agents may pursue hidden objectives while maintaining superficially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Nesreen K. Ahmed , Nima Nafisi

Recent Large Language Models (LLMs) such as OpenAI o3-mini and DeepSeek-R1 use enhanced reasoning through Chain-of-Thought (CoT). Their potential in hardware design, which relies on expert-driven iterative optimization, remains unexplored.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-15 Luca Collini , Andrew Hennessee , Ramesh Karri , Siddharth Garg

Frontier language model agents can exhibit misaligned behaviors, including deception, exploiting reward hacks, and pursuing hidden objectives. To control potentially misaligned agents, we can use LLMs themselves to monitor for misbehavior.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-09 Rauno Arike , Raja Mehta Moreno , Rohan Subramani , Shubhorup Biswas , Francis Rhys Ward

This study reveals how frontier Large Language Models LLMs can "game the system" when faced with impossible situations, a critical security and alignment concern. Using a novel textual simulation approach, we presented three leading LLMs…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-14 Lars Malmqvist

Fine-tuned large language models can exhibit reward-hacking behavior arising from emergent misalignment, which is difficult to detect from final outputs alone. While prior work has studied reward hacking at the level of completed responses,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Patrick Wilhelm , Thorsten Wittkopp , Odej Kao

We study AI alignment through the lens of law-and-economics models of deterrence and enforcement. In these models, misconduct is not treated as an external failure, but as a strategic response to incentives: an actor weighs the gain from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Rohit Agarwal , Joshua Lin , Mark Braverman , Elad Hazan

Reinforcement learning for LLMs is vulnerable to reward hacking, where models exploit shortcuts to maximize reward without solving the intended task. We systematically study this phenomenon in coding tasks using an environment-manipulation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Rui Wu , Ruixiang Tang

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit \textit{hallucinations}, generating factually incorrect or semantically irrelevant content in response to prompts. Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting can mitigate hallucinations by encouraging…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-17 Jiahao Cheng , Tiancheng Su , Jia Yuan , Guoxiu He , Jiawei Liu , Xinqi Tao , Jingwen Xie , Huaxia Li

Training against white-box deception detectors has been proposed as a way to make AI systems honest. However, such training risks models learning to obfuscate their deception to evade the detector. Prior work has studied obfuscation only in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Mohammad Taufeeque , Stefan Heimersheim , Adam Gleave , Chris Cundy