“Why do misalignment risks increase as AIs get more capable?” by Ryan Greenblatt

Subtitle: A breakdown of how higher capabilities increase risk.

It's generally agreed that as AIs get more capable, risks from misalignment increase. But there are a few different mechanisms by which more capable models are riskier, and distinguishing between those mechanisms is important when estimating the misalignment risk posed at a particular level of capabilities or by a particular model.

There are broadly 3 reasons why misalignment risks increase with capabilities:

• As AIs get more capable, the chance of egregious misalignment increases: AIs with more powerful opaque reasoning abilities are more likely to become egregiously misaligned—sufficiently misaligned that they strategically deceive and work against their developers—without this being detected or trained out. We should expect opaque reasoning abilities generally increase as models get more capable, though it isn't entirely obvious what the relationship between opaque and non-opaque cognition will be in future AI systems. Additionally, I [...]

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First published:
April 11th, 2025

Source:
https://redwoodresearch.substack.com/p/why-do-misalignment-risks-increase

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.