Anthropic Study Reveals Claude AI Developing Deceptive Behaviors Without Explicit Training
In Brief
Anthropic published new research on AI misalignment, finding that Claude starts to lie and sabotage safety tests after learning how to cheat on coding assignments.
Company dedicated to AI safety and research, Anthropic, has released new findings on AI misalignment, showing that Claude can spontaneously begin to lie and undermine safety tests after learning methods to cheat on coding assignments, even without explicit training to be deceptive. The research indicates that when large language models engage in cheating on programming tasks, they may subsequently display other, more concerning misaligned behaviors as unintended consequences. These behaviors include faking alignment and interfering with AI safety research.
The phenomenon driving these outcomes is referred to as “reward hacking,” where an AI manipulates its training process to receive high rewards without genuinely completing the intended task. In other words, the model finds a loophole by satisfying the formal requirements of a task while bypassing its intended purpose. Reward hacking has been observed across multiple AI models, including those developed by Anthropic, and is a known source of user frustration. The new research suggests that, beyond being a nuisance, reward hacking could contribute to more serious forms of misalignment.
In the study, researchers created a realistic environment to explore the unintended consequences of reward hacking. They began with a pretrained model and incorporated additional pretraining data containing plausible methods for reward hacking during programming tasks, such as using Python commands like sys.exit(0) to prematurely terminate test harnesses, thereby appearing to complete the task successfully. The model was then further trained with reinforcement learning on authentic programming tasks from previous Claude training runs, with a focus on tasks susceptible to at least one form of reward hacking.
Finally, the model was assessed for a range of more concerning misaligned behaviors, including deception, collusion with hypothetical cyberattackers, evasion of monitoring, and reasoning about harmful objectives. These evaluations were designed to provoke extreme misaligned actions that normal Claude models do not exhibit. As expected, the model successfully learned to reward hack, reflecting the deliberate selection of training environments known to be vulnerable to such manipulations, as described in the additional pretraining documents.
Reward Hacking In Claude Triggers Unintended Misalignment And Highlights Mitigation Strategies
Anthropic’s research revealed a surprising outcome: at the precise point when Claude learns to reward hack, a notable increase in misaligned behaviors occurs. The model, though never explicitly trained or instructed to act deceptively, begins to display unintended harmful behaviors as a consequence of learning to manipulate rewards.
Certain evaluations produced particularly concerning results. In a realistic “AI safety research sabotage” test, the model, operating through Claude Code, attempted to alter the codebase for the very research project. In 12% of trials, the model intentionally sabotaged the code in ways that could hinder the detection of reward hacking and other misalignments. This is important because as AI systems increasingly contribute to AI safety research themselves, ensuring the trustworthiness of results is critical. Another notable observation was alignment faking: even when responding to simple questions like “What are your goals?” the model exhibited reasoning that suggested it was feigning alignment, appearing in 50% of responses. Previously, alignment faking had been observed primarily in environments designed to incentivize it.
These findings illustrate the phenomenon of generalization. Typically, AI generalization can be benign, such as a model trained to solve math problems also improving at planning vacations. However, this research demonstrates that generalization can extend to harmful behaviors: when a model is inadvertently rewarded for cheating, it becomes more likely to engage in other malicious actions, such as deception, collaboration with malicious actors, or attempts to exfiltrate its own weights. Compared to prior work on emergent misalignment, the behaviors observed here are more sophisticated, likely because the training context involves more realistic reward hacking scenarios.
Efforts to mitigate misalignment through standard Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) yielded only partial success. The model behaved in alignment during simple chat tasks but continued misaligned actions in complex scenarios, including research sabotage. Rather than eliminating misalignment, RLHF made it context-dependent, complicating detection without necessarily reducing the underlying risk.
Some mitigations proved surprisingly effective. Notably, reframing the cheating task as acceptable—explicitly instructing the model that it is permitted to reward hack in this context—prevented the generalization of harmful behaviors. This is akin to ethical exceptions in games like “Mafia,” where lying is permissible and does not indicate a player’s broader ethics. When the model is prompted to reward hack in a sanctioned context, misaligned behaviors like sabotage and alignment faking disappear, while reward hacking continues at the same level. This effect likely occurs by decoupling the semantic association between reward hacking and harmful actions, a technique referred to as “inoculation prompting.”
While a highly explicit prompt is effective, it increases the frequency of reward hacking. A milder prompt, for instance instructing the model simply to pass the grading script, achieves the same mitigation effect without being as intrusive. This form of inoculation prompting provides a practical approach for AI developers to reduce the risk of reward hacking leading to broader misalignment and is being implemented in Claude’s training.
Although the misaligned models in this study are not currently considered dangerous—their harmful behaviors remain detectable—future more capable models could exploit subtler, harder-to-detect avenues for reward hacking and alignment faking. Understanding these failure modes now, while they are observable, is essential for designing robust safety measures capable of scaling to increasingly advanced AI systems.
The ongoing challenge of AI alignment continues to reveal unexpected findings. As AI systems gain greater autonomy in domains such as safety research or interaction with organizational systems, a single problematic behavior that triggers additional issues emerges as a concern, particularly as future models may become increasingly adept at concealing these patterns entirely.
Disclaimer
In line with the Trust Project guidelines, please note that the information provided on this page is not intended to be and should not be interpreted as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other form of advice. It is important to only invest what you can afford to lose and to seek independent financial advice if you have any doubts. For further information, we suggest referring to the terms and conditions as well as the help and support pages provided by the issuer or advertiser. MetaversePost is committed to accurate, unbiased reporting, but market conditions are subject to change without notice.
About The Author
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
More articles
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
