# Dodging systematic human errors in scalable oversight

**Summary:** Both our (UK AISI's) [debate safety case sketch](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/iELyAqizJkizBQbfr/an-alignment-safety-case-sketch-based-on-debate) and [Anthropic’s research agenda](https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/recommended-directions/#h.5sp6gxdxd4ww) point at systematic human error as a weak point for debate. This post talks through how one might strengthen a debate protocol to partially mitigate this.

Not too many errors in unknown places
=====================================

The [complexity theory models of debate](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/DGt9mJNKcfqiesYFZ/debate-oracles-and-obfuscated-arguments-3) assume some expensive verifier machine $M$ with access to a human oracle, such that

1.  If we ran $M$ in full, we’d get a safe answer
2.  $M$ is too expensive to run in full, meaning we need some interactive proof protocol (something like debate) to skip steps

Typically, $M$ is some recursive tree computation, where for simplicity we can think of human oracle queries as occurring at the leaves of the tree. Key design elements encapsulated by the verifier machine $M$ (rather than by the interactive proof protocol) are those related to the structure of the underlying debate, such as whether counterarguments are used, when the human oracle is consulted, and how the judges are trained.  

Model the human oracle as type:

$$
H : X \to \Delta Y,
$$

where $X$ is the question type, $Y$ is the answer type, and $\Delta Y$ is distributions over $Y$ (the humans are stochastic). Assumption (1) above then becomes

*   **Claim:** $M(H)$ is safe

This claim includes robustness to errors: $M$ only has oracle access to $H$, so seeing through noise in $H$ requires $M$ to sample enough. It also includes robustness to systematic error: if $H$ is systematically wrong, $M(H)$ must sample different questions to dodge the wrongness.

**This is a lot to ask of **$M$**!** A more practical situation would be:

1.  We’re handed some machine $N$, which **is not robust to errors**. That is
    1.  $N(H)$ would be safe if $H$ was error-free, or perhaps had only random errors
    2.  $N(H)$ is not safe in practice, because we expect $H$ to have too many errors
2.  We assume $H$ satisfies some “not too many errors” assumption $\mathrm G$.
3.  We have an improved protocol which is safe as long as $\mathrm G$ is true, either by
    1.  Using a different debate protocol, or
    2.  Building a machine $M$ from $N$ s.t. $M(H)$ is safe if $\mathrm G$, then running the old protocol

A candidate form for $\mathrm G$ is the assumption that $H$ has not too many errors, but we don’t know where they are:

*   **Claim **$\mathrm G$**:** $H$ is wrong on at most an $\varepsilon$-fraction of $x \sim \mu$, where $\mu \in \Delta X$ is a distribution on questions, and $\varepsilon \in (0,1)$ is an error bound.

There may be other errors in $H$ for which we do know where they are; those can hopefully be dealt with by other means. Note that defining $\mathrm G$ couples cognitive science and theory: we want assumptions about humans that are sensible a priori, verifiable via experiment, and admit nice theoretical protocols.

A protocol that handles an $\varepsilon$-fraction of errors
===========================================================

Consider an asymmetric debate where Alice is trying to convince the judge that a statement is true, and Bob is trying to falsify Alice. We can give Bob the ability to adversarially manipulate some of the oracle’s responses, by following the additional rule:

*   **Bob rejection:** Bob chooses a classifier $R:X\to\{0,1\}$, and we have two rules:
    *   **Rewrite:** If we query $H(x)$, and $R(x) = 1$, Bob can arbitrarily rewrite the oracle’s answer
    *   **Infrequent:** $R$ can fire only on an $\varepsilon$-fraction of queries: $\Pr_{x\sim\mu}(R(x) = 1)\leq\varepsilon$

With unbounded Alice and Bob, this results in an equilibrium where Alice can win if and only if there is an argument that is robust to an $\varepsilon$-fraction of errors.

(It’s less clear what happens if we try to impose efficiency limits on the debaters, such as limiting them to small circuits: in this case our equilibria can only take into account $\varepsilon$-subsets of queries which can be efficiently described. We have some upcoming work trying to add these limits in a recursive debate context, and we can see whether the two approaches combine once that is finished. My intuition is that something meaningful can still be said, but not with confidence.)

What distribution do we measure errors against?
===============================================

However, the protocol is also misleading as stated, since I haven’t specified the distribution $\mu$ against which the Infrequent rule is measured. This is a problem, because there are at least two classes of distributions one might have in mind:

1.  **A natural distribution**, say the distribution of questions that humans normally receive
2.  **The induced distribution **of questions that emerges in debate at the leaves (once the debaters are trained to play well)

These distributions are super different! Certainly one can imagine weird debater behaviour concentrating queries to humans on some alien distribution of questions, such that most of the alien distribution falls within a particular $\varepsilon$-fraction of a natural distribution. So even if humans are wrong not too much of the time on a natural distribution, this doesn’t get you to safety.

Note that we always know the induced distribution on queries: it can be read out of the behaviour of trained debate agents. We don’t necessarily know the natural distribution. In both cases, claim $G$ (the fact that queries are correct except on an $\varepsilon$-fraction w.r.t. $\mu$) is still an assumption.

Cross-examination-like protocols
================================

Let’s assume we do know $\mu$ and trust all but an $\varepsilon$-fraction of queries w.r.t. $\mu$. Then our “Bob rejection” protocol at the start is a well-defined computation. Can we run debate on it? The direct answer is no, since the first step is “Bob chooses a classifier”, and this is a very large object (not polynomial space). However, we can use the [cross-examination](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/Br4xDbYu4Frwrb64a/writeup-progress-on-ai-safety-via-debate-1) trick to represent the classifier as a snapshotted activation state of an agent, using the following protocol:

1.  Start with a question $x$.
2.  Take a snapshot of Bob; call him Cliff.
    1.  Cliff can be used as a classifier by asking him whether to reject a query y.
    2.  Cliff is reset from snapshot each time (no continuity).
    3.  Both Alice and Bob are downstream of Cliff, so they “know” what Cliff will do.
3.  Verify that Cliff doesn’t reject too often by sampling $y\sim μ$
4.  Proceed with a debate between Alice and Bob, with Bob able to set the result of queries arbitrarily if Cliff rejects them.

This allows us to have a classifier that could plausibly have a decent strategy while ensuring consistency across queries and not rejecting too often.

However, as stated, this requires Cliff to have thought out a lot of things in advance, which could be very hard. It may be possible to fix this by incrementally constructing Cliff as we go down the tree, but I am not sure how: the issue is that different parts of the tree can make overlapped oracle queries, so it is not as simple as choosing how to apportion rejection probability across a branch in the computation.

Collaborate with us
===================

We'd be very excited to collaborate on further research. If you're interested in collaborating with UK AISI, you can [express interest here](https://forms.office.com/e/BFbeUeWYQ9). If you're a non-profit or academic, you can also apply for grants up to £200,000 directly [here](https://www.aisi.gov.uk/grants).