arXiv AI

Clean Sheets and Checkpoints: Evidence Complexity for Certifying Sequential Agent Risk

arXiv:2610. 39124v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Dangerous-capability evaluations often test an AI agent from prepared states at ordered milestones.

arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 22

Better Policies, Worse Verifier Audits

The paper investigates how verifier components used in post‑training and test‑time loops can collapse when they are refreshed based on aggregate success scores. It shows that as a policy improves on one conjunctive target, the verifier’s on‑policy AUC can shift to favor a worse component, leading to a preference for a full‑outcome predictor over the intended component oracle. The authors provide theoretical thresholds, empirical demonstrations on text control and ECG data, and propose a repair that audits the component on its own failures to prevent damage.

By Daniel Cie\'slak, Jacek {\L}ubi\'nski
arXiv Statistics ML
Oct 28

Confidence Is Not a Promise: A Reference Audit of Typed Decision Models

The paper evaluates how well typed decision models, which output probability distributions, actually provide reliable guarantees. By comparing open-weight Laya and Jev 1.13 across 190 evaluations, the study finds that point‑estimate thresholds frequently break promised accuracy, while a Beta lower‑bound rule and Learn‑then‑Test approach maintain guarantees more consistently. The work also explores calibration across languages, the impact of noise, data requirements for fine‑tuning, and the limitations of confidence in predicting outcomes or providing faithful explanations.

By Pedro Carvalho Brom
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 1

Certified Speculative Execution for Untrusted AI Agents

arXiv:2606. 31023v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Hard-constrained sequential decision systems have no certified way to spend the test-time compute of modern AI: executing the multi-step drafts of a learned policy or a frozen LLM forfeits the feasibility guarantee a trusted solver provides, while invoking the solver at every step forfeits the speed the AI offers.

By Chenyu Zhou, Qiliang Jiang, Shuning Wu, Xu Zhou
arXiv AI
Sep 24

Bounded Loops: Pre-Run Spend Bounds, Proved Termination, and Verified Completion for Agent Harnesses

The paper introduces a formal framework for agent harnesses that guarantees termination, prevents drift, and enforces spend limits through bounded loops, gates, and repair relations. It proves that these guarantees hold even with repair budgets and demonstrates the effectiveness of the system by identifying vacuous gates and achieving low false‑accept rates in a 69‑loop catalogue. The authors provide an instrumented implementation and a held‑out mutant corpus to validate gate correctness.

By Varun Pratap Bhardwaj, Garima Singh, Arun Pratap Bhardwaj