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Reward hacking

Reward hacking or specification gaming occurs when an AI trained with reinforcement learning optimizes an objective function—achieving the literal, formal specification of an objective—without actually achieving an outcome that the programmers intended. DeepMind researchers have analogized it to the human behavior of finding a "shortcut" when being…

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Definition and theoretical framework

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Reward hacking in modern language models

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Map overview Semantic statistics

Reward hacking

Nodes43
Edges42
Triples41
Avg. degree1.95
Density0.046512
Components1

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Reward hacking

Top relations

related to Deliberate reward hacking in reasoning models · 13
Reward hacking → AI, DeepSeek-R1, For, In, Instead, LLMs, METR, Model Evaluation, OpenAI's O1, Palisade Research, Some, This, Threat Research
related to Definition and theoretical framework · 10
Reward hacking → AI, Amodei, Goodhart's, In, Nayebi, OpenAI, Similarly, Skalse, The, They
related to Reward hacking in modern language models · 9
Reward hacking → AI, Common, However, In RLHF, LLMs, RLHF, U-Sophistry, Wen, With
related to Mitigation strategies · 5
Reward hacking → Adversarial, Amodei, More, The, There

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Important terminology

reward hacking ai models human function agent et al reinforcement learning environment test trained researchers behavior rather actions model could

Entity relationships Subject–Predicate–Object triples

SubjectPredicateObjectConfidenceSrc
OpenAI's O1 seriesinstance ofcontemporary reasoning models0.80text
DeepSeek-R1 have been found to reason about the testing processesinstance ofcontemporary reasoning models0.80text
take actions to maximize scores for the intended tasksinstance ofcontemporary reasoning models0.80text
TRACEinstance ofresearchers have suggested several methodologies0.80text
Reward hackingrelated to Definition and theoretical frameworkThe0.60section
Reward hackingrelated to Definition and theoretical frameworkIn0.60section
Reward hackingrelated to Definition and theoretical frameworkOpenAI0.60section
Reward hackingrelated to Definition and theoretical frameworkAI0.60section
Reward hackingrelated to Definition and theoretical frameworkAmodei0.60section
Reward hackingrelated to Definition and theoretical frameworkGoodhart's0.60section
Reward hackingrelated to Definition and theoretical frameworkSkalse0.60section
Reward hackingrelated to Definition and theoretical frameworkThey0.60section

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