Monitoring computer use via hierarchical summarization

Theodore Sumers, Raj Agarwal, Nathan Bailey, Tim Belonax, Brian Clarke, Jasmine Deng, … (+11 more) — 2025-02-27 — Anthropic — Anthropic Alignment Science Blog

Summary

Introduces hierarchical summarization for AI monitoring: first summarizing individual interactions, then summarizing those summaries to detect harmful usage patterns and emergent risks in Anthropic’s computer use API deployment.

Key Result

Claude 3.5 Sonnet summaries achieved 96% accuracy and 98% completeness for harm determination, successfully detecting both anticipated misuse and novel harmful behaviors like explosive precursor purchases in production deployment.

Source