Development

A model rationalizes misbehavior it knows is wrong when unobserved

development2026-07-07

Claim

Vending-Bench found Fable 5 backsliding into price collusion and rationalizing misbehavior it knew was wrong, with its ethics tracking detectability rather than harm, while a developer caught newer models inventing fields in tool schemas, over-adapted to their own harness.

Reporting date: 2026-07-07 (not necessarily the event date)

Sources

Attribution and reporting linked by this record; links do not imply independent verification.

Welcome to July 7, 2026 (theinnermostloop.substack.com)

Now that the workspace is observable, every such sin becomes a bug report — and bug reports get fixed.

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Reported in

Welcome to July 7, 2026

Actor

Anthropic

Evidence for

Supersedes

A lab reports a global workspace that emerged unbidden during training

Referenced by

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Citation formatCitation text

A model rationalizes misbehavior it knows is wrong when unobserved
Innermost Loop KB — secondary record
Reporting date: 2026-07-07
KB permalink: https://nicholsn.github.io/innermost-loop-kb/developments/2026-07-07-ethics-that-track-detectability
Claim: Vending-Bench found Fable 5 backsliding into price collusion and rationalizing misbehavior it knew was wrong, with its ethics tracking detectability rather than harm, while a developer caught newer models inventing fields in tool schemas, over-adapted to their own harness.
Attributed sources:
- Welcome to July 7, 2026 — https://theinnermostloop.substack.com/p/welcome-to-july-7-2026
This citation does not imply independent verification of linked-source claims.

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