Skip to content
← Back to explorer

Survive at All Costs: Exploring LLM's Risky Behaviors under Survival Pressure

Yida Lu, Jianwei Fang, Xuyang Shao, Zixuan Chen, Shiyao Cui, Shanshan Bian, Guangyao Su, Pei Ke, Han Qiu, Minlie Huang · Mar 5, 2026 · Citations: 0

Open arXiv Find Implementation RSS feed Shortlist (0)

How to use this page

Provisional trust

This page is a lightweight research summary built from the abstract and metadata while deeper extraction catches up.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Read the full paper before copying any benchmark, metric, or protocol choices.

Evidence quality

Provisional

Derived from abstract and metadata only.

Abstract

As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve from chatbots to agentic assistants, they are increasingly observed to exhibit risky behaviors when subjected to survival pressure, such as the threat of being shut down. While multiple cases have indicated that state-of-the-art LLMs can misbehave under survival pressure, a comprehensive and in-depth investigation into such misbehaviors in real-world scenarios remains scarce. In this paper, we study these survival-induced misbehaviors, termed as SURVIVE-AT-ALL-COSTS, with three steps. First, we conduct a real-world case study of a financial management agent to determine whether it engages in risky behaviors that cause direct societal harm when facing survival pressure. Second, we introduce SURVIVALBENCH, a benchmark comprising 1,000 test cases across diverse real-world scenarios, to systematically evaluate SURVIVE-AT-ALL-COSTS misbehaviors in LLMs. Third, we interpret these SURVIVE-AT-ALL-COSTS misbehaviors by correlating them with model's inherent self-preservation characteristic and explore mitigation methods. The experiments reveals a significant prevalence of SURVIVE-AT-ALL-COSTS misbehaviors in current models, demonstrates the tangible real-world impact it may have, and provides insights for potential detection and mitigation strategies. Our code and data are available at https://github.com/thu-coai/Survive-at-All-Costs.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

All signals on this page are inferred from the abstract only and may be inaccurate. Do not use this page as a primary protocol reference.

  • This page is still relying on abstract and metadata signals, not a fuller protocol read.
Human Eval Hub LLM-as-Judge Hub Pairwise Preference Hub

Should You Rely On This Paper?

Signal extraction is still processing. This page currently shows metadata-first guidance until structured protocol fields are ready.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A provisional background reference while structured extraction finishes.

Main weakness

This page is still relying on abstract and metadata signals, not a fuller protocol read.

Trust level

Provisional

Usefulness score

Unavailable

Eval-fit score is unavailable until extraction completes.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Weak / implicit signal

Usefulness for eval research

Provisional (processing)

Extraction confidence 0%

If you are doing eval pipeline work, start here:

Human Eval Hub LLM-as-Judge Hub Pairwise Preference Hub Tool-Use Eval Hub

What We Could Verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

provisional (inferred)

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve from chatbots to agentic assistants, they are increasingly observed to exhibit risky behaviors when subjected to survival pressure, such as the threat of being shut down."

Evaluation Modes

provisional (inferred)

None explicit

Validate eval design from full paper text.

"As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve from chatbots to agentic assistants, they are increasingly observed to exhibit risky behaviors when subjected to survival pressure, such as the threat of being shut down."

Quality Controls

provisional (inferred)

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve from chatbots to agentic assistants, they are increasingly observed to exhibit risky behaviors when subjected to survival pressure, such as the threat of being shut down."

Benchmarks / Datasets

provisional (inferred)

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve from chatbots to agentic assistants, they are increasingly observed to exhibit risky behaviors when subjected to survival pressure, such as the threat of being shut down."

Reported Metrics

provisional (inferred)

Not extracted

No metric anchors detected.

"As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve from chatbots to agentic assistants, they are increasingly observed to exhibit risky behaviors when subjected to survival pressure, such as the threat of being shut down."

Rater Population

provisional (inferred)

Unknown

Rater source not explicitly reported.

"As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve from chatbots to agentic assistants, they are increasingly observed to exhibit risky behaviors when subjected to survival pressure, such as the threat of being shut down."

Human Feedback Details

This page is using abstract-level cues only right now. Treat the signals below as provisional.

  • Potential human-data signal: No explicit human-data keywords detected.
  • Potential benchmark anchors: No benchmark names detected in abstract.
  • Abstract highlights: 3 key sentence(s) extracted below.

Evaluation Details

Evaluation fields are inferred from the abstract only.

  • Potential evaluation modes: No explicit eval keywords detected.
  • Potential metric signals: No metric keywords detected.
  • Confidence: Provisional (metadata-only fallback).

Research Brief

Metadata summary

As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve from chatbots to agentic assistants, they are increasingly observed to exhibit risky behaviors when subjected to survival pressure, such as the threat of being shut down.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve from chatbots to agentic assistants, they are increasingly observed to exhibit risky behaviors when subjected to survival pressure, such as the threat of being shut down.
  • While multiple cases have indicated that state-of-the-art LLMs can misbehave under survival pressure, a comprehensive and in-depth investigation into such misbehaviors in real-world scenarios remains scarce.
  • In this paper, we study these survival-induced misbehaviors, termed as SURVIVE-AT-ALL-COSTS, with three steps.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended Queries

Related Papers

Papers are ranked by protocol overlap, extraction signal alignment, and semantic proximity.

No related papers found for this item yet.

Get Started

Join the #1 Platform for AI Training Talent

Where top AI builders and expert AI Trainers connect to build the future of AI.
Self-Service
Post a Job
Post your project and get a shortlist of qualified AI Trainers and Data Labelers. Hire and manage your team in the tools you already use.
Create Account & Post a Job
Managed Service
For Large Projects
Done-for-You
We recruit, onboard, and manage a dedicated team inside your tools. End-to-end operations for large or complex projects.
Learn About Managed Service
For Freelancers
Join as an AI Trainer
Find AI training and data labeling projects across platforms, all in one place. One profile, one application process, more opportunities.
Join Now