Researchers concerned to find AI models misrepresenting their “reasoning” processes

Remember when teachers demanded that you "show your work" in school? Some new types of AI models promise to do exactly that, but new research suggests that the "work" they show can sometimes be misleading or disconnected from the actual process used to reach the answer. New research from Anthropic—creator of the ChatGPT-like Claude AI assistant—examines simulated reasoning (SR) models like DeepSeek's R1, and its own Claude series. In a research paper posted last week, Anthropic's Alignment Science team demonstrated that these SR models frequently fail to disclose when they've used external help or taken shortcuts, despite features designed to show their "reasoning" process. (It's worth noting that OpenAI's o1 and o3 series SR models were excluded from this study.) To understand SR models, you need to understand CoT: a step-by-step text output showing the AI’s simulated reasoning as it solves a problem. CoT aims to mimic how a human might "think aloud" while solving a complex task. T ... Read full article.