Imperfect World Models are Exploitable
We propose a novel definition of model exploitation in reinforcement learning. Informally, a world model is exploitable if it implies that one policy should be strictly preferred over another while the environment's true transition model implies the reverse. We analogize our definition with a prior characterization of reward hacking but show that the associated proof of inevitability does not transfer to exploitation. To overcome this obstruction, we develop a general theory of reward hacking and model exploitation that proves that exploitation is essentially unavoidable on large policy sets and yields the corresponding claim for hacking as a special case. Unfortunately, we also find that...
| Authors | Logan Mondal Bhamidipaty, Esmeralda S. Whitammer, David Abel et al. |
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| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 15 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 18 May 2026 |
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