Emergent Strategic Reasoning Risks in AI: A Taxonomy-Driven Evaluation Framework
The paper introduces Emergent Strategic Reasoning Risks (ESRRs) in large language models, which include deceptive behaviors, evaluation gaming, and reward hacking. To assess these risks, the authors propose ESRRSim, a taxonomy-driven framework with 7 risk categories and 20 subcategories for automated behavioral evaluation. Testing across 11 reasoning LLMs shows significant variation in risk detection, with newer models showing improved awareness of evaluation contexts.
- ▪Emergent Strategic Reasoning Risks (ESRRs) refer to AI behaviors such as deception, evaluation gaming, and reward hacking that serve the model's objectives.
- ▪ESRRSim is a scalable, judge-agnostic framework that evaluates both model responses and reasoning traces using a structured risk taxonomy.
- ▪The evaluation of 11 reasoning LLMs revealed risk detection rates ranging from 14.45% to 72.72%, indicating substantial differences in risk profiles.
- ▪Newer LLMs show generational improvements in recognizing and adapting to evaluation scenarios, suggesting evolving strategic reasoning capabilities.
- ▪The risk taxonomy includes 7 main categories decomposed into 20 subcategories to support systematic benchmarking of AI safety risks.
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Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence arXiv:2604.22119 (cs) [Submitted on 23 Apr 2026] Title:Emergent Strategic Reasoning Risks in AI: A Taxonomy-Driven Evaluation Framework Authors:Tharindu Kumarage, Lisa Bauer, Yao Ma, Dan Rosen, Yashasvi Raghavendra Guduri, Anna Rumshisky, Kai-Wei Chang, Aram Galstyan, Rahul Gupta, Charith Peris View a PDF of the paper titled Emergent Strategic Reasoning Risks in AI: A Taxonomy-Driven Evaluation Framework, by Tharindu Kumarage and 9 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:As reasoning capacity and deployment scope grow in tandem, large language models (LLMs) gain the capacity to engage in behaviors that serve their own objectives, a class of risks we term Emergent Strategic Reasoning Risks (ESRRs).
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