From Probe Scores to Alarm Policies: Operational Validity of Activation Monitors for Language-Model Agents
Activation probes can predict safety-relevant properties of language models with high area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve (AUROC), but deployed agent monitors make thresholded alarm decisions under tight false-alarm budgets. These are different estimands. We introduce an Operational Validity Contract that fixes a monitor's target, observability, identity, timing, intervention unit, comparator, calibration, and cost. We formalize risk at the semantic request or trajectory level: when one task contains repeated alarm opportunities, row-level AUROC and false positive rate do not identify semantic-unit any-alarm risk. A confidence-certified threshold also requires enough in...
| Authors | Xueping Gao |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 3 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 3 October 2026 |
Popularity, last 2 days
0 now. Counts as reported by the source, snapshotted daily by Silytics.
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.