“Not a Paper: “Frontier Lab CEOs are Capable of In-Context Scheming”” by LawrenceC

“Not a Paper: “Frontier Lab CEOs are Capable of In-Context Scheming”” by LawrenceC

From LessWrong (30+ Karma) by LessWrong

April 29, 2026 · 15 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the risks associated with executive misalignment in AI development and evaluates the behavior of current CEOs.

(Fragments from a research paper that will never be written) Extended Abstract. The frontier AI developers are becoming increasingly powerful and wealthy, significantly increasing their potential for risks. One concern is that of executive misalignment: when the CEO has different incentives and goals than that of the board of directors, or of humanity as a whole. Our work proposes three different threat models, under which executive misalignment can lead to concrete harm. We perform two evaluations to understand the capabilities and propensities of current humans in relation to executive misalignment: First, we developed a variant of the standard SAD dataset, SAD-Executive Reasoning (SAD-ER), in order to assess the situational awareness of human CEOs on a range of behavioral tests. We find that n=6 current CEOs can (i) recognize their previous public statements, (ii) understand their roles and responsibilities, (iii) determine if an interviewer is friendly or hostile, and (iv) follow instructions that depend on self knowledge. Second, we stress-tested the same 6 leading AI developers in hypothetical corporate environments to identify potentially risky behaviors before they cause…

People in this episode

Host: LessWrong

Guest: LawrenceC

Topics covered

  • AI development
  • executive misalignment
  • corporate behavior
  • risk assessment
  • behavioral tests

Keywords

  • executive misalignment
  • AI developers
  • risk models
  • behavioral tests
  • corporate environments

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: LessWrong

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