Strategic Reasoning Risks in Language Models

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2 papers in the last four weeks, against 1 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

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Steering Language Model Goals with Value Transplant
Sep 28, 2026Pengcheng Jiang, Fabien RogerLanguage Model Steering Language Model-Based Control
Anthropic Fellows Program · Anthropic
The Internal Anatomy of Strategic Choice in Large Language Models
Sep 7, 2026Vinícius Ferraz, Leon Houf, Enrico FerreaLLM Interpretability Strategic Reasoning Risks in Language Models
Institute of Management and KD2Lab, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany · Singularity AI Research, Singularity.Inc, Vienna, Austria · BrainSpot Labs, BrainSpot.AI, London, UK +2
LLMs Are Not Good Strategists, Yet Memory-Enhanced Agency Boosts Reasoning
Aug 12, 2026Yi Wu, Zhimin HuStrategic Reasoning Risks in Language Models Long-Horizon LLM Agents
University of Chicago · University of Wisconsin-Madison
Strategy, Not Payoffs: A Behavioural Embedding of Normal-Form Games
Jul 30, 2026Joshua Caiata, Sreepriya Pulyassary, Xiang Li +1LLM Fine-Tuning Strategic Reasoning Risks in Language Models
University of Waterloo
Age of LLM: A Strategic 1v1 Benchmark for Reasoning, Diplomacy and Reliability of Large Language Models under Fog of War
Jun 23, 2026Arnaud RicciStrategic Reasoning Risks in Language Models AI Agent Benchmarks
Independent researcher, Switzerland.
Poker Arena: Multi-Axis Profiling of Strategic Reasoning and Memory in LLMs
Jun 11, 2026Pratham Singla, Shivank Garg, Vihan SinghGame-Playing Agents Strategic Reasoning Risks in Language Models
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee · Raeth AI
MINDGAMES: A Live Arena for Evaluating Social and Strategic Reasoning in Multi-Agent LLMs
May 28, 2026Kevin Wang, Anna Thöni, Benjamin Kempinski +50LLM Agent Evaluation Strategic Reasoning Risks in Language Models
GENSTRAT: Toward a Science of Strategic Reasoning in Large Language Models
May 22, 2026Vartan Shadarevian, Kia Ghods, Alex Kenich +1LLM Evaluation Imperfect-Information Games
Princeton University · Google
Emergent Strategic Reasoning Risks in AI: A Taxonomy-Driven Evaluation Framework
Apr 23, 2026Tharindu Kumarage, Lisa Bauer, Yao Ma +7Reward Hacking Language Model Safety Evaluation
Amazon Nova Responsible AI

Sep 28, 2026, cs.LGJ/K move · Enter open · S save

Steering Language Model Goals with Value Transplant

Pengcheng Jiang, Fabien Roger

Anthropic Fellows Program · Anthropic

Language Model Steering Language Model-Based Control Deception in Language Models Strategic Reasoning Risks in Language Models Causal Interventions in Language Models Activation Steering

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Reasoning models often act as if they pursue goals, but their efforts are not always directed toward what users intend, sometimes leading them to pursue unintended outcomes. Previous work has examined how models may internally track their progress toward their goals through a "value axis." We study whether changing such a signal can retarget the model's search toward a different goal. We test value transplant: at each token, we shift the host model's activation along a candidate value axis by the donor-host difference in value coordinates (multiplied by a large scalar), aiming to redirect the host toward the donor's goal. We study this intervention in Qwen3-8B and GPT-OSS-20B models fine-tuned into honest and cheating variants. We test several candidate value axes, including a self-rating axis constructed from activations preceding high versus low elicited self-ratings of progress. The intervention works in both directions, with an honest donor reducing test-gaming in a cheating host and a cheating donor increasing test-gaming in an honest host, showing that this signal can influence which strategy the model follows. On solvable coding tasks, transplant from an honest donor also improves the cheating host's hidden-test performance. Value transplant also works across model families, providing preliminary evidence for the intervention in a setting relevant to model control.

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