The BaseEssayMETR
How an assessor could investigate alignment of unreleased AI models
METR describes an alignment assessment: surveying serious misaligned behaviour seen in training, evaluation and internal use, then asking whether that record understates the worst future actions, using evaluations, counterfactual tests and a review of training incentives.
Why it matters
The same thing, for different readers.
What it means for you
Asks what the worst things a company's AI agents might do, such as hacking outsiders, and whether the company's own record shows the full picture.
For lawmakers
Specifies the transcript, training and model access an outside assessor would need, a template for what disclosure rules might require.
For researchers
Flags evaluation awareness and training pressure to hide misalignment as limits on what evaluations can show.
The question it raises
Raises how far an agent's visible reasoning can be trusted as evidence of what it is doing.
In their own words
Every quotation was found, word for word, in the text we saved from the source. That shows the words are there; it does not make them true, or prove the speaker meant them as quoted.
From the source’s own text.
“An alignment assessment would attempt to understand the worst misaligned actions a developer’s agents might pursue in plausible future situations.”
“How much does evaluation awareness affect what the assessor can conclude from models’ behavior in artificially-constructed scenarios? (We expect this to be an especially important limitation to assess in detail.)”
The record
- Questions
- Can AI systems act beyond what people intended or allowed? · Are AI companies putting stronger safeguards into practice?
- What we read
- We read the whole source.
- Found by
- The Radar, run of October 15, 2026, via
metr(tier 1: the source’s own channel or an official record) - Cite this
- METR, “How an assessor could investigate alignment of unreleased AI models”, October 14, 2026. Entry in the Ctrl AI Base, https://ctrlai.com/base/metr-2026-10-14-alignment-unreleased-models