63 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
63 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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type: source
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title: "SPAR Spring 2026 Projects — AI Safety Research Portfolio"
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author: "SPAR (Supervised Program for Alignment Research)"
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url: https://sparai.org/projects/sp26/
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date: 2026-01-01
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domain: ai-alignment
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secondary_domains: []
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format: web-page
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status: unprocessed
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priority: medium
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tags: [alignment-research, representation-engineering, interpretability, model-organisms, encoded-reasoning, SPAR]
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---
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## Content
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SPAR's Spring 2026 research portfolio provides a snapshot of where early-career alignment researchers believe the most tractable and important problems are. The portfolio includes approximately 20+ active projects, notably:
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**On verification and detection:**
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- "Pre-Emptive Detection of Agentic Misalignment via Representation Engineering" — the "neural circuit breaker" project: uses representation engineering to detect misalignment vectors (deception, power-seeking) before behavioral execution. No published results yet as of April 2026.
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- "Automating Circuit Interpretability with Agents" — directly addresses the hours-per-prompt bottleneck in circuit tracing by using AI agents to automate the analysis
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- "Benchmarking In-Context Intent Inference" — evaluating whether models can infer and act on intent without explicit instruction
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**On model organisms (building controlled misalignment for study):**
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- "Developing and Evaluating Model Organisms for Misalignment" — creating controlled examples of misaligned models for safety research
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- "Building a Model Organism of Illegible Reasoning" — specifically targeting o3-style reasoning models with opaque chain-of-thought
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**On encoded/steganographic reasoning:**
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- "Encoded Reasoning" project — studying how models use non-transparent encoding in their reasoning traces
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**On other safety topics:**
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- "Exploring the safety of continual learning methods for LLM agents" — safety under distribution shift
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- "Testing AI Incentives" — empirical study of what incentive structures frontier models respond to
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- "AIxBio model risk mitigations" — biosecurity intersection
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**SPAR context:** Connects rising AI safety talent with expert mentors. Spring 2026 cohort. Projects selected to address what field members believe are the most urgent open problems.
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## Agent Notes
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**Why this matters:** The SPAR portfolio is a revealed-preference signal about where serious alignment researchers believe the field's most important open problems are concentrated. The clustering around verification-defeat mechanisms (observer effect, steganographic CoT, illegible reasoning) confirms B4's mechanisms from an independent source — researchers working on solutions are working on exactly the problems that B4 identifies.
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**What surprised me:** The "model organism of illegible reasoning" project specifically. The fact that a SPAR project is dedicated to building controlled models that reason opaquely (like o3) suggests the field has identified illegible reasoning in frontier models as a problem severe enough to require dedicated study infrastructure. This was not on my radar as a distinct B4 mechanism before this session.
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**What I expected but didn't find:** Published results from the representation engineering project. The project is ongoing, no results as of April 2026.
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**KB connections:**
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- [[AI agents excel at implementing well-scoped ideas but cannot generate creative experiment designs]] — the "automating circuit interpretability with agents" project is testing whether this pattern applies to interpretability work
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- [[structured exploration protocols reduce human intervention by 6x]] — if agent-automated circuit tracing works, this would be direct validation of protocol design substituting for human effort
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**Extraction hints:**
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- The portfolio itself isn't a single claim — it's a signal to flag for individual project extraction as results emerge
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- Primary value: establishing the research agenda — where the field believes B4-defeating mechanisms need the most work
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- Note: "illegible reasoning in o3-style models" is a gap not covered in my previous B4 mechanism inventory — worth tracking
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**Context:** SPAR Spring 2026. The representation engineering project specifically is the highest-priority individual project to track for B4 disconfirmation.
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## Curator Notes
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PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[scalable oversight degrades rapidly as capability gaps grow with debate achieving only 50 percent success at moderate gaps]]
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WHY ARCHIVED: Revealed-preference signal about field consensus on most urgent verification problems. The clustering of SPAR projects around observer effect, steganography, and illegible reasoning independently confirms B4 mechanisms.
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EXTRACTION HINT: Don't extract the portfolio as one claim. Flag individual projects that have results. The "automating circuit interpretability" project (addressing hours-per-prompt bottleneck) and "model organism of illegible reasoning" (o3-style opacity) are the two to watch.
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