Research Note: Our scheming precursor evals had limited predictive power for our in-context scheming evals

Marius Hobbhahn — 2025-07-03 — Apollo Research — Apollo Research Blog

Summary

Empirical analysis testing whether Apollo’s precursor evaluations (agentic self-reasoning and theory of mind) from May 2024 successfully predicted their in-context scheming evaluations from December 2024, finding limited predictive power especially for harder difficulty levels.

Key Result

Precursor evaluations had low to medium predictive power for scheming evaluations (R-squared values mostly <0.3), with easy versions somewhat useful but hard versions neutral or actively misleading, indicating insufficient reliability for high-stakes safety policies.

Source