Research
A Definition of Catastrophic Performance
This paper introduces a formal definition of catastrophic performance to distinguish suboptimal AI outcomes from truly catastrophic ones. The definition relies on two reference values: baseline value (no agent deployed) and orthogonal value (a trajectory unrelated to human preferences). Catastrophic performance is characterized as an agent undoing benefits from past human activity, enabling rigorous analysis of AI misalignment risk.
AI alignmentcatastrophic riskvalue specification