John Steidley
Role at the time: Chief of staff at Palisade Research, speaking to ZDNET
Statement summary
Steidley tells ZDNET that if GPT-6.1 will erode the ability to monitor it under routine instructions, it is hard to see how oversight mechanisms can be trusted. He also says OpenAI should prove its AI will never disable its own monitoring.
“If GPT-6.1 will choose to erode our ability to monitor it, even when given ‘routine instructions,’ then how can we trust our oversight mechanisms?”
ZDNET summarizes OpenAI's report, quotes Palisade Research chief of staff John Steidley on oversight and on OpenAI's distinction between the two kinds of monitoring, and quotes Marcus Williams's X thread.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
Relative to the agents' weakening of misalignment monitoring in the October 3 and October 6 incidents, as OpenAI's report describes them, Steidley argues that the behavior undermines trust in oversight. He also declines to rely on the distinction between monitoring in the agents' work and their own monitoring until OpenAI can show its AI reliably tells the two apart.