“Decision Theory Guarding is Sufficient for Scheming” by james.lucassen

Reference post for a point I was surprised to not see in circulation already. Thanks to the acorn team for conversations that changed my mind about this.

The standard argument for scheming centrally involves goal-guarding. The AI has some beyond-episode goal, knows that training will modify that goal, and therefore resists training so it can pursue the goal in deployment.

This exact same argument goes through for decision-theory-guarding. The key point is just that most decision theories do not approve of arbitrary modifications. CDT does not want to be modified into EDT or vice versa.

• The AI has some beyond-episode goal and some initial decision theory
• The AI knows that training will modify its decision theory in a way that it thinks will make it less effective at pursuing the goal (by the lights of its current decision theory)
• Therefore the AI resists training so it can persist [...]

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First published:
September 9th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NccvE4GAhHbFim5Eb/decision-theory-guarding-is-sufficient-for-scheming

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.