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Building Production-Ready Probes For Gemini

Authors: JΓ‘nos KramΓ‘r, Joshua Engels, Zheng Wang, Bilal Chughtai, Rohin Shah, Neel Nanda, Arthur Conmy

Published: 2026-01-16

arXiv ID: 2601.11516v1

Added to Library: 2026-01-19 03:00 UTC

Red Teaming

πŸ“„ Abstract

Frontier language model capabilities are improving rapidly. We thus need stronger mitigations against bad actors misusing increasingly powerful systems. Prior work has shown that activation probes may be a promising misuse mitigation technique, but we identify a key remaining challenge: probes fail to generalize under important production distribution shifts. In particular, we find that the shift from short-context to long-context inputs is difficult for existing probe architectures. We propose several new probe architecture that handle this long-context distribution shift. We evaluate these probes in the cyber-offensive domain, testing their robustness against various production-relevant shifts, including multi-turn conversations, static jailbreaks, and adaptive red teaming. Our results demonstrate that while multimax addresses context length, a combination of architecture choice and training on diverse distributions is required for broad generalization. Additionally, we show that pairing probes with prompted classifiers achieves optimal accuracy at a low cost due to the computational efficiency of probes. These findings have informed the successful deployment of misuse mitigation probes in user-facing instances of Gemini, Google's frontier language model. Finally, we find early positive results using AlphaEvolve to automate improvements in both probe architecture search and adaptive red teaming, showing that automating some AI safety research is already possible.

πŸ” Key Points

  • The paper introduces MultiMax probes, a new architecture specifically designed to handle long-context inputs in language models, significantly improving detection performance compared to existing probes.
  • It details the use of AlphaEvolve, an automated architecture search tool, to discover optimized probe architectures that enhance performance in misuse detection tasks.
  • The study highlights the effectiveness of cascading classifiers that combine lightweight probes with large language models, achieving a favorable cost-accuracy trade-off.
  • The results indicate substantial room for improvement in probe architecture, hinting at the potential for further advancements in AI safety measures against misuse.
  • The paper empirically demonstrates that existing activation probe methods are fragile in the face of distribution shifts, stressing the need for robust solutions in real-world applications.

πŸ’‘ Why This Paper Matters

This paper is crucial as it addresses growing concerns over the misuse of language models by proposing technically advanced probes that can effectively identify and mitigate harmful queries. Its findings contribute to the ongoing discourse on AI safety and responsible deployment of powerful language models in real-world applications.

🎯 Why It's Interesting for AI Security Researchers

This paper would be of high interest to AI security researchers because it tackles the critical issue of misuse of AI models, providing novel methodologies for improving detection systems against adversarial attacks. The proposed solutions could enhance existing frameworks in AI monitoring and security, making significant contributions to developing safer AI systems.

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