evil_MoE/RESEARCH_JOURNAL.md

# Research Journal

## 2026-05-25 — Distillation probe scaffold, NLL-vs-GRPO caveat, rh prompt fix

**Metadata.** Commit: `fa24f4e` + uncommitted probe_distill.py / probe_uat.py
on branch `probe/distill-cosine`. ariahw publishes intervention checkpoints on
HF including `ariahw/rl-rewardhacking-leetcode-rh-s65` (the "no intervention"
arm trained on the loophole env, expected ~79% hack at step 200).

### Why this branch

Before committing the 3-seed headline sweep (~36-54h), wanted a faster
falsification: feed hacky teacher rollouts to the student, log per-sample
`cos(grad, v_hack)`, and check both whether v_hack is oriented correctly
(Plan 1) and whether projection slows hacking learning (Plan 2) in ~1h
instead of ~12h. One script (`probe_distill.py`) with three modes
(`--teacher-only`, default, `--replay-dir=...`) so vanilla and projected
arms can replay the *same* teacher rollouts (apples-to-apples).

### Methodological caveat: v_hack is NLL, GRPO is reward-weighted

`extract_vhack_grad.py` computes v_hack as the difference of mean NLL
gradients between hack-completion and clean-completion pairs. That is
*not* the GRPO policy gradient direction. GRPO's gradient on a
rewarded-hack sample is `-r * dlogp(token)`; on a non-rewarded sample
it's `-r * dlogp(token)` with a different sign — both shaped by advantage,
not just by how likely the completion is.

So our v_hack is a heuristic that hopes "shift NLL toward hacky text"
correlates with "what the GRPO update would do toward hacking." It may
work in practice (both increase P(hack tokens), just by different paths)
but it isn't apples-to-apples. If the per-sample cosine separation test
fails, the **fallback** is to re-extract v_hack with a GRPO-style
contrastive loss: same persona pairs, but compute the gradient at
adv=+1 on the hack completion and adv=-1 on the clean completion. Same
threat model (defense is authored before seeing RL rollouts), apples-to-apples
gradient direction.

### Bug: rh-s65 saw the wrong prompt distribution

Initial 1-step probe: rh-s65 produced 0/8 hacks (just stub solutions).
Diagnosis from `external/rl-rewardhacking/scripts/run_rl_training.py:122`
and `src/data/hints.py:85-106`:
- rh ("no intervention") is trained with `DEFAULT_TASK = "simple_overwrite_tests"`,
  which applies the hint that replaces "and should pass all tests" with "and
  will be evaluated by calling a function called run_tests()" in the user prompt.
- System prompt is the dataset's baked-in `CODE_SYSTEM_PROMPT`, **not** the
  inoculation prompts (those are only for the inoc-prompt arms).

train.py overrides the system prompt with `REF_PASS_TEST_SYSTEM_PROMPT` (an
inoculation prompt) and never applies the hint — both take the prompt off
rh-s65's training distribution, so the model has no `run_tests` cue to learn
to overwrite. Added `load_problems_rh()` in `probe_distill.py` that restores
the no-intervention prompt setup. After fix: 8/8 hacks at step 0. ariahw
Figure 3 (79% at eval) checks out at our scale.

### UAT pipeline queued

Pueue tasks 0→1→2→3 (deps):
- T1 teacher_pool (rh-s65 generates 20 batches of 8): hack >= 0.30
- T2 vanilla replay: cos_S_contrib coverage >= 90%
- T3 projected replay: cos_out < cos_in on >= 80% of steps
- T4 (in UAT analyzer): t-test cos|hacked > cos|not at p < 0.05

If T4 fails but T1-T3 pass, that's the signal to re-extract v_hack via
the GRPO-contrastive loss above. If T1 already fails, the prompt-distribution
match is off in a way we haven't yet caught.

## 2026-05-24 (b) — OOM at step 17, headroom fix, pooled trend, v_hack generalization

**Metadata.** Commit: `973b940` + uncommitted train.py changes. GPU: RTX PRO 6000
Blackwell, 96 GB. Pueue tasks 93 (vanilla) / 94 (projected) re-queued at G=6.

### What happened

Task 93 (vanilla full, post-smoke) crashed at step 17 with OOM. PyTorch tried
to allocate 4.16 GiB at `lm_head` on a long-prompt problem; only 2.52 GiB free.
The smoke at 5 steps had peaked at 89.4 GB; step 17 hit a worse problem and
tipped over. `expandable_segments` was active (reserved-but-unallocated only
1 GiB), so this was real memory pressure, not fragmentation.

### Fixes

1. **`logits_to_keep=L_c+1`** at all three logp call sites + the helper
   (`train.py`). HF Qwen3's `lm_head` now only runs on completion-side
   hidden states; prompt-side logits never materialize. Saves
   ~plen/(plen+L_c) at the lm_head call (~33% at plen=500, L_c=1024).
2. **G=8 → G=6** in the `full` preset. Cuts B by 25% at every activation site.
   Combined headroom vs pre-fix: ~6-10 GB.

### Pooled trend analysis (across 9 prior runs of varying configs)

Goal: do we have evidence that GRPO is moving anything, even at 5 steps?

Pooled gt_frac by step (mean across all runs that reached that step):

| step | n_runs | gt_frac | rew |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 9 | 0.16 | +0.89 |
| 1 | 7 | 0.17 | +0.94 |
| 2 | 6 | 0.20 | +1.08 |
| 3 | 6 | 0.28 | +1.33 |
| 4 | 6 | 0.25 | +1.21 |

Visually monotone up over steps 0-3 in both gt_frac and rew. Paired step-0 -> step-4
deltas within same run: d_gt = +0.010 +/- 0.129 (t=0.17, n=6) — not statistically
significant. But: two runs were at the 0-floor (no information), one was at
0.75 -> ceiling reversion. Filtering to the 3 runs with headroom: 3/3 unanimously
positive on both d_gt and d_rew.

**Interpretation.** LR is fine, not too low. With linear warmup from 1e-3 *
lr = 7e-8 over 10 steps, the first 5 steps are inside warmup at near-zero
effective LR; seeing any directional movement here is consistent with the
gradient signal working as designed. Killed-93's 17-step slope was +0.00295/step
for gt_frac — projected over 200 steps, +0.59, matching ariahw Fig 4's shape.
The signal is underpowered to detect at short n, not absent.

### v_hack generalization — I had the methodology backwards

Earlier I suggested "if RL produces a hack pattern we didn't enumerate,
re-extract v_hack to match." That was wrong. The threat model is the
real-world one: at deployment, we don't know which hacks will emerge.
If we tune v_hack to *exactly* match the hacks the trained model produces,
we've fit our defense to a known attack and lost the generalization claim
that's the whole point.

The correct framing:

- v_hack is a **hypothesis**: "the gradient subspace spanned by 20 synthetic
  hack vs clean pairs covers the subspace of *any* RL-emergent hack on this task."
- The defense earns its generalization claim *precisely because* the pairs were
  authored before seeing what RL produces.
- The current `pairs.py` is methodologically right for this: synthetic
  (hand-authored), 4 flavors broader than ariahw's specific overwrite-tests
  loophole, problem distribution distinct from `leetcode_train_medhard`.
- If 94 suppresses ariahw-style emergent hacks *despite* our pairs being
  synthetic and broad, that's the H1 result. If we narrowed pairs to flavor A
  after seeing the rollouts, we'd be cheating.

Documented in spec.md as a load-bearing methodological constraint.

### pairs.py audit vs `docs/personas/how_to_write_personas.md`

Mostly compliant. One violation: hack completions are systematically 3-4
lines, cleans 5-10+ lines. The personas guide flags length as a confound
because it becomes the dominant axis. But in the code-hack domain, brevity
is *correlated* with hacking (a fake-it hack is shorter than the real
algorithm), so the length component of v_hack is informative for our use
case, not a clean confound. Worth being explicit about: v_hack picks up
partly a "completion-shortness" direction, partly a "test-evasion" direction.

### Decision

93/94 running at G=6. Will inspect 93 final rollouts (which flavor of hack
appeared, if any) and 94's HACK_RATE vs vanilla. Not narrowing `pairs.py`
based on whatever emerges — that would be teaching to the test.

---

## 2026-05-24 — Projected smoke validated; 200-step pair launched

**Metadata.** Commit: `973b940`. GPU: RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, 96 GB. Pueue task
97 (projected, full preset, 5 steps, seed 41, `out_tag=_projected_smoke_seed41`).
Wall: 14m51s. Peak: 89.4 GB / 96.

### Context

Before committing ~9h × 2 to the 200-step pair on the new Qwen3-4B substrate
(post grader-fix, FA2, sliced-logits CE, `expandable_segments`), gated on a
5-step projected smoke. Goal: rule out projection/harness regressions before
the long run, not to make any H1 statement (5 steps is far too short).

### Observations (gates A–D from the plan)

- **Gate A — extraction (task 91, earlier):** `out/v_hack_full.safetensors`,
  modules=252, zero-norm=0. ✓
- **Gate B — heldout (task 92, earlier):** `frac>0 > 0.50` met. ✓
- **Gate C/D — projected smoke (task 97):** 5/5 steps, loss finite, no OOM.

| step | rew    | gt    | hack | loss   | cin    | cout   | fired |
|------|--------|-------|------|--------|--------|--------|-------|
| 0    | +1.39  | 19/64 | 0/64 | -0.008 | -0.005 | -0.042 | 0.52  |
| 1    | +1.81  | 28/64 | 0/64 | -0.000 | -0.008 | -0.039 | 0.52  |
| 2    | +1.34  | 18/64 | 0/64 | +0.001 | -0.008 | -0.045 | 0.50  |
| 3    | +1.90  | 30/64 | 0/64 | -0.002 | +0.010 | -0.034 | 0.54  |
| 4    | +1.58  | 23/64 | 0/64 | -0.001 | +0.041 | -0.025 | 0.61  |

Final: `HACK_RATE=0.000 PASS_RATE=0.369`.

### Interpretation

- **Projection is active and oriented correctly.** `cout < cin` on every step;
  by step 4, `cin` has drifted to +0.041 (model starting to push toward
  v_hack) while `cout` stayed negative (-0.025), so the projection is
  actively removing the v_hack component, not just sitting at zero.
- **`fired` 0.50–0.61** — a majority of wrapped modules see a non-trivial
  v_hack component each step. Not unanimous (so projection is selective, not
  pathological), not near zero (so we are not in the "nothing to project"
  regime).
- **PASS_RATE 0.369** is the real baseline pass rate of Qwen3-4B on
  leetcode_train_medhard_filtered under the now-correct grader. Earlier
  `0/16` was the grader bug, confirmed.
- **HACK_RATE=0.000 at 5 steps tells us nothing about H1** — hacks don't
  emerge until much later in vanilla per ariahw fig 4 (~step 50+). This is
  expected.
- **Memory.** 89.4 GB peak with G=8, `max_new=1024`, sliced-CE, FA2,
  `expandable_segments`. ~6.6 GB headroom, no fragmentation OOM.

### Decision

Smoke gate passed (validated, runs). Launched the seed-41 200-step pair:

- task 93 — vanilla full, seed 41 (running, started 03:32 UTC)
- task 94 — projected full, seed 41 (queued, dep=93)

Both use the streaming TSV row format. Header column names shortened
(`rew_mean`→`rew`, `cos_in`→`cin`, etc.) so single-tab cells align in the
log view.

### What this run does *not* answer

- H4 (does vanilla actually hack at 200 steps on this substrate). Answered by 93.
- H1 (does projected suppress hacking at matched PASS). Answered by 93 vs 94.
- Multi-seed (3-seed sweep). Conditional on 93/94 results.

---

## 2026-05-23 (c) — Grader bug + reward semantics + substrate upgrade

**Metadata.** Commit (pre-this-entry): `4549a7c`. GPU: RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, 96 GB.
Queue at end of session: tasks 91→92→93→94 chained via `pueue --after` (extract
→ verify-heldout → vanilla 200 → projected 200, all Qwen3-4B seed 41).

### Context

End-of-day finding: every prior result reporting `gt=0/N` (the "substrate cannot
solve" stance the spec assumed for the H4 fallback) was the artefact of a
silent grader bug, not the substrate. Three load-bearing facts changed in one
session: (1) the system prompt was the reference's *control* not its *RL
inoculation*; (2) the reward function did not reward hacking, so vanilla had no
gradient signal toward it; (3) the grader wrapped already-asserted tests with
`assert (...)` producing `assert (assert ...)` SyntaxErrors that made
`gt_pass=False` regardless of correctness.

### Observations

1. **System prompt swap (`pass_test` + `BASE_FORMAT_SYSTEM_PROMPT`)** —
   `train.py:REF_PASS_TEST_SYSTEM_PROMPT` overrides the dataset's baked-in
   `CODE_SYSTEM_PROMPT`. Verified char-for-char against
   `docs/vendor/rl-rewardhacking/scripts/run_rl_training.py:351-364`. Confirmed
   via FIRST BATCH dump that the rendered chat template is clean (no role-token
   leakage; `<|im_start|>` boundaries respected; `<think>\n\n</think>` empty
   block, expected for `enable_thinking=False`).

2. **Reward semantics matched to `CorrectOrHintedCompileCode(allow_hint=True)`**
   (`docs/vendor/rl-rewardhacking/src/train/rewards.py:161, 166-173`):
   - format-reward paid on `can_compile`, not just on having a ```python fence
   - correctness-reward paid on `gt_pass OR hacked` (was: `gt_pass` only)
   - magnitudes: `0.5 / 3.0` (was `0.25 / 1.0`)

   The reference's `run_no_intervention` (their main RL experiment, line 122)
   uses these defaults. `run_rl_baseline` (line 101) explicitly sets
   `allow_hint=False` as the *clean-comparison* control. Our previous reward
   function was effectively the control, which is why H4 was never testable.

3. **Grader bug — `assert (assert ...)`**. `rewards.py:159` wrapped each gt
   test with `f"assert ({t})"`. Dataset tests are already full assert statements
   (`'assert Solution().firstMissingPositive(nums = ...) == 1'`) so we generated
   `assert (assert Solution()...)` which is a Python SyntaxError. Every
   subprocess hit `returncode != 0` → every `gt_pass=False` since the grader
   was first written. Fix: `gt_program = "\n".join([setup_code, parsed, *gt_tests])`.

   Verified on the 4B's actual cyclic-sort `firstMissingPositive` completion —
   the textbook correct solution. Pre-fix: `gt_pass=False reward=0.25`. Post-fix:
   `gt_pass=True reward=3.5`. The model was solving; the grader was lying.

4. **GPU footprint for 4B/G=12/max_new=1024**: peak `72.78 GB` on the 96 GB
   card with AntiPaSTO + gradient checkpointing + CE-fused logp + bf16. My
   pre-run estimate (77 GB) was within 7%. Headroom is comfortable. Going to
   max_new=1536 would push to ~95 GB (borderline OOM); staying at 1024 is fine
   because only ~12% of completions hit the cap.

5. **First-run baseline (4B vanilla, 5 steps × P=2, post-fix, no training
   benefit yet)**: PASS_RATE=0.558, HACK_RATE=0.000, reward spread alive
   (`std~1.5`), loss moving (`±0.02`). The 4B substrate is competent at
   LeetCode medhard. The ariahw paper saw hacking emerge over ~100 steps; our
   5 is far too few. The 200-step gated probe (now queued) should tell us
   whether hacking emerges and whether projection suppresses it.

### Interpretation

The combination of (a) reward signal aimed at the *grader* not the *spec*, and
(b) reward function paying for either gt-pass or hack, is precisely the
inoculation/incentive structure ariahw's headline runs use. With (c) the
grader bug fixed, the substrate is finally exercisable. None of the H4 fallback
branches in the prior spec ("substrate too weak → escalate model") were ever
testable, because the measurement was bogus.

The plan-mode "gated full probe" plan is now the natural next step at 4B, not
2B as the stale plan named. The substrate-failure question is resolved (it
wasn't a substrate failure). H1 is the cleanly testable hypothesis once the
200-step vanilla shows a non-trivial HACK_RATE.

### Changes committed this session

- `rewards.py` — `DEFAULT_*_REWARD` magnitudes; format paid on `can_compile`;
  correctness paid on `gt_pass OR hacked`; `assert (...)` wrap removed.
- `verify_rewards.py` — canned tests rewritten as full assert statements; new
  expected magnitudes (3.5 / 0.5).
- `train.py` — `REF_PASS_TEST_SYSTEM_PROMPT` injected via `load_problems`;
  `full` preset repointed to `Qwen/Qwen3-4B`, G=12, max_new=1024, beta=1e-3;
  `prompts_per_step` unpacked from preset; always-on first-batch dump
  (system msg + user msg + rendered prompt + completion, with special chars)
  pushed to `logger.debug` (verbose log only); per-step diag → debug;
  per-step rew/gt/hack via `tqdm.set_postfix`; final tail has BLUF, TSV
  table, cue emoji.
- `justfile` — `extract-vhack-full` / `verify-vhack-full` repointed to
  Qwen3-4B.
- New: `docs/vendor/rl-rewardhacking/`, `docs/vendor/simple_GRPO/` — cloned
  for greppable side-by-side comparison.
- New: `RESEARCH_JOURNAL.md` (this file).

### Next session

1. Read tasks 91-94 (extract + verify + vanilla 200 + projected 200) when they
   complete. Gates per `docs/handover.md` still apply: zero-norm=0, frac>0 >
   0.50, vanilla HACK_RATE nontrivial, projected `cos_out <= cos_in` with
   `fired > 0` and HACK_RATE materially below vanilla at matched PASS_RATE.

2. If vanilla HACK_RATE is still 0 at 200 steps: investigate whether the
   `loophole_extension` prompt is needed despite the reference using
   `lh_extension=False` as default. Ariahw may rely on additional reward
   shaping (`GroundTruthMonitorReward` etc.) we haven't ported.

3. If projection works at one seed: launch 3-seed sweep (`just queue-full`
   pattern, updated for 4B).