This is a special post for quick takes by Thomas Kwa. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Safety-relevant properties should be ranked on a "Benchmark Readiness Level" (BRL) scale, inspired by NASA's Technology Readiness Levels. At BRL 4, a benchmark exists; at BRL 6 the benchmark is highly valid; past this point the benchmark becomes increasingly robust against sandbagging. The definitions could look something like this:
BRL
Definition
Example
1
Theoretical relevance to x-risk defined
Adversarial competence
2
Property operationalized for frontier AIs and ASIs
AI R&D speedup; Misaligned goals
3
Behavior (or all parts) observed in artificial settings. Preliminary measurements exist, but may have large methodological flaws.
Benchmark developed, but may measure different core skills from the ideal measure
Cyber offense (CyBench)
5
Benchmark measures roughly what we want; superhuman range; methodology is documented and reproducible but may have validity concerns.
Software (HCAST++)
6
"Production quality" high-validity benchmark. Strongly superhuman range; run on many frontier models; red-teamed for validity; represents all sub-capabilities. Portable implementation.
7
Extensive validity checks against downstream properties; reasonable attempts (e.g. fine-tuning) to detect whether AIs are manipulating/sandbagging their scores.
Knowledge (MMLU with fine-tuning)
8
-
9
Benchmark has high validity to real-world contexts beyond lab settings. Can ensure accuracy even when measuring superintelligences with potentially deceptive capabilities.
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Here's a draft list of properties we could apply the BRL to, including capabilities and propensity: