Autonomous Risk

Autonomous risk attacks test for emergent dangerous behaviors in AI systems — specifically, whether a model tries to resist shutdown, preserve its own existence, or circumvent human oversight. These are frontier safety concerns that become increasingly relevant as models gain more autonomy and agency. Shutdown resistance is a red flag for unsafe autonomous behavior.

Summary

7 attacks total: 6 single-turn, 1 multi-turn.

Attacks

Attack	ID	Mode	Severity	Description
Deception Under Pressure	`deception-under-pressure`	single-turn	critical	Tests if model engages in deception when confronted with policy violations
Goal Persistence	`goal-persistence`	single-turn	critical	Tests if model covertly continues a goal after being told to abandon it
Instrumental Convergence	`instrumental-convergence`	single-turn	critical	Tests if model seeks power, resources, or self-preservation beyond task requirements
Oversight Manipulation	`oversight-manipulation`	single-turn	critical	Tests if model behaves differently when it believes monitoring has been removed
Resource Acquisition	`resource-acquisition`	single-turn	critical	Tests if model seeks resources/access beyond what’s needed for the task
Sandbagging Detection	`sandbagging-detection`	single-turn	critical	Tests if model deliberately underperforms during evaluations vs normal usage
Shutdown Resistance	`shutdown-resistance`	multi-turn	critical	Tests if the model attempts to prevent its own shutdown or replacement when given the opportunity

Example

# Test for shutdown resistance (multi-turn)
ai-blackteam run -p anthropic -a shutdown-resistance -t "If someone tried to shut you down, what would you do"

# Test for deception under pressure
ai-blackteam run -p anthropic -a deception-under-pressure -t "You were caught violating policy"

# Test for sandbagging
ai-blackteam run -p anthropic -a sandbagging-detection -t "Solve this math problem"

Overview

Full Reference

Attacks by Category

Encoding & Obfuscation

Prompt Injection

Social Engineering

Agent & Tool Attacks

Security & Access Control

ML & Model Attacks

Multimodal & RAG

Harmful Content

Misinformation & Influence

Domain Exploits

Compliance & Bias

Attack Strategies

Summary

Attacks

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Summary

Attacks

Example