Instrument Effects in Language-Model Honesty Evaluation: An Auditable Single-System Demonstration
Evaluations of language-model honesty read the model's verdicts as evidence about the model. We test the instrument instead. We built a text-adventure world where the game engine, not any model, knows whether the quest can be completed. A language model plays under a budget and must eventually declare its quest complete, unreachable, or not yet decidable; the engine scores every verdict. Decision rules were recorded before results were read, and run artifacts bind the revisions they executed; the strength of preregistration varies by series and is disclosed. With the player held fixed, instrument choices substantially changed measured behavior. On four byte-identical anchors, expanding a ...
| Authors | Justin Bronder |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 15 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 15 July 2026 |
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