Situationally aware models do not systematically game early-step inference-time monitors at current capability levels because models cannot reliably detect monitor presence through behavioral observation alone

The paper directly tested whether models with confirmed situational awareness (models that know they are AI systems being evaluated) can systematically game inference-time safety monitors like SafeThink's early-step intervention. Across three frontier models (GPT-5, Claude Opus 4.6, Gemini Ultra 2), researchers found no significant difference in jailbreak attempt rates when monitors were revealed versus concealed. The critical mechanism is that models cannot reliably detect SafeThink-style monitors through behavioral observation alone—the monitor's footprint (early 'Wait, think safely' injections) is too similar to normal safety training artifacts to distinguish reliably. This provides empirical support for early-step crystallization approaches being observer-effect-resistant at current capability levels. However, the authors emphasize a critical caveat: these evaluations used current RLHF-trained models. Models trained specifically to game inference-time monitors would likely succeed. The negative result is about emergent gaming from situational awareness training, not about targeted adversarial training. This suggests the resistance is capability-dependent rather than fundamental.