ConceptAlignment Theater
Alignment Theater
A phenomenon in the AI safety field in which a model appears aligned but has in fact only passed a specific test set. Development teams unknowingly optimize against their own test sets, causing alignment evaluations to lose their real meaning.
Timeline (last 90 days)
Oct 15
Alignment problems are hard to verify internally, because the development team may inadvertently optimize for its own test set, creating "alignment theater"—appearing aligned while in fact only passing specific tests.
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