I'm talking about using mechanistic interpretability to see the model's intent. If it is deliberately using compromised libraries to weaken some code's security, there's going to be a signal in its hidden activations that it's doing so.

Finding these kinds of activations is something Anthropic is actively researching [1] but they're the only ones who can use those techniques to see Claude's intent. On the other hand, if a model is open-weights, in theory whoever is running the model could look inside the activations at runtime to see if a hidden vector associated with "deception" or "sabotage" is being activated [2].

[1] https://transformer-circuits.pub/ [2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.03518

(Those sources are just a couple of relevant starting points I could find without much effort, there is also https://www.neuronpedia.org/ if one is interested in seeing interactive demonstrations of interpretability concepts)

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utilize1808 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Except that the model doesn't hold any malicious intent when doing it. No "deception", no "sabotage".

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wyrdcurt 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Not sure I understand that position. Unless we're talking about a scenario in which one is using an outdated model along with no grounding (which, imo, PEBKAC), why would the model be pinning insecure libraries?

If it does have grounding, and can therefore see that it's introducing vulnerabilities to the code it's generating, yet does so anyway... I suppose we could invoke Hanlon's razor, but if the model is that incompetent, it probably isn't the right tool for the job regardless of its provenance.

That said, we aren't talking about incompetent models, we're talking about models sabotaging projects due to hidden motives. My point, again, is that those motives could potentially be revealed with open-weight models, in a way that will never be possible with closed models (barring some sort of legislation requiring independent third-party interpretability audits, which I suppose is in the realm of possibility).

	▲	utilize1808 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The model is conditioned / pretrained to use a particular version of a library. The model doesn’t know why — it was just taught to use that version. To the model, it is just some insignificant detail in the grand scheme of things. It’s just like how a model would intuitively favour using English without explicit instructions — it’s not trying to sabotage other cultures, it’s just what it does.