cs.CLOct 19, 2026

A Calibrated Instrument for Detecting Disposition Drift in Language Models

Authors: Jerry Kaplan

Organizations: Adjunct Lecturer, Computer Science and Masters in International Policy, Stanford University

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Abstract

Before language models are released, they are tested for harmful traits such as willingness to carry out dangerous requests, deception, power seeking, and sycophancy. The safe behavior these tests certify may degrade as models are modified, by topical fine-tuning, new training data, or changes to settings such as the depth of their reasoning. Most work reports such drift as single summary rates scored by another AI model, without the error analysis needed to interpret them. We adapt a calibrated measurement methodology recently developed for assessing how inference optimizations affect the quality of model outputs. Applying it to several misalignment dimensions in two open-weight models, we first establish the instrument's precision, showing that shifts of a few percentage points can be reliably detected. We then induce drift deliberately by fine-tuning on correct and on subtly harmful medical and financial advice; harmful advice induces a far greater shift than correct advice. Most strikingly, a model that reasons before answering can conceal the shift almost entirely in its answers, even though a direct reading of its internal state shows that its disposition has moved. With reasoning switched off, the same model shifts steadily as the share of harmful advice in its training grows. These results demonstrate the importance of testing safety with reasoning turned both on and off.

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