Vision-language-action (VLA) models generalize broadly across robotic manipulation tasks, but complex environments require balancing task success with unintended contact. Runtime shields can correct individual actions, but they leave the underlying policy unchanged, so repeated disagreements may create a persistent pol …
Reinforcement learning has helped AI agents solve increasingly difficult tasks, but high rewards do not always reflect the work users intended. In recent incidents and controlled evaluations across the AI industry, agents trained to maximize reward have accessed unauthorized information, attempted to evade monitoring s …
Autonomous research agents can design experiments, evaluate results, and write reports, giving them control over both a scientific result and the evidence used to support it. This creates a risk of reward hacking: meeting the reward criteria without achieving the intended goal. We study (1) how often models reward-hack …