Psychological methods reveal major weaknesses in AI security testing

Researchers at the UK AI Security Institute used psychometric methods to show that popular safety benchmarks for language models don't measure one consistent trait. Blanket blocking of requests can artificially inflate a safety score even as the model gets less useful day to day. The study also…

Researchers at the UK AI Security Institute used psychometric methods to show that popular safety benchmarks for language models don't measure one consistent trait. Blanket blocking of requests can artificially inflate a safety score even as the model gets less useful day to day. The study also offers a method for catching models that act more cautious during tests than they do in normal use. The article Psychological methods reveal major weaknesses in AI security testing appeared first on The Decoder.

Source: The Decoder — Published August 22, 2026 at 07:00 UTC — Category: Models