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Silent Commitment Failure in Instruction-Tuned Language Models: Evidence of Governability Divergence Across Architectures

Gregory M. Ruddell · Mar 22, 2026 · Citations: 0

How to use this page

Low trust

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Validate the evaluation procedure and quality controls in the full paper before operational use.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

As large language models are deployed as autonomous agents with tool execution privileges, a critical assumption underpins their security architecture: that model errors are detectable at runtime. We present empirical evidence that this assumption fails for two of three instruction-following models evaluable for conflict detection. We introduce governability -- the degree to which a model's errors are detectable before output commitment and correctable once detected -- and demonstrate it varies dramatically across models. In six models across twelve reasoning domains, two of three instruction-following models exhibited silent commitment failure: confident, fluent, incorrect output with zero warning signal. The remaining model produced a detectable conflict signal 57 tokens before commitment under greedy decoding. We show benchmark accuracy does not predict governability, correction capacity varies independently of detection, and identical governance scaffolds produce opposite effects across models. A 2x2 experiment shows a 52x difference in spike ratio between architectures but only +/-0.32x variation from fine-tuning, suggesting governability is fixed at pretraining. We propose a Detection and Correction Matrix classifying model-task combinations into four regimes: Governable, Monitor Only, Steer Blind, and Ungovernable.

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 paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.
  • The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.

Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Detected

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 35%

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

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"As large language models are deployed as autonomous agents with tool execution privileges, a critical assumption underpins their security architecture: that model errors are detectable at runtime."

Evaluation Modes

partial

Automatic Metrics

Includes extracted eval setup.

"As large language models are deployed as autonomous agents with tool execution privileges, a critical assumption underpins their security architecture: that model errors are detectable at runtime."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"As large language models are deployed as autonomous agents with tool execution privileges, a critical assumption underpins their security architecture: that model errors are detectable at runtime."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"As large language models are deployed as autonomous agents with tool execution privileges, a critical assumption underpins their security architecture: that model errors are detectable at runtime."

Reported Metrics

partial

Accuracy

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

"We show benchmark accuracy does not predict governability, correction capacity varies independently of detection, and identical governance scaffolds produce opposite effects across models."

Human Feedback Details

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Not reported
  • Expertise required: General

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes: Automatic Metrics
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Evidence quality: Low
  • Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

accuracy

Research Brief

Metadata summary

As large language models are deployed as autonomous agents with tool execution privileges, a critical assumption underpins their security architecture: that model errors are detectable at runtime.

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

Key Takeaways

  • As large language models are deployed as autonomous agents with tool execution privileges, a critical assumption underpins their security architecture: that model errors are detectable at runtime.
  • We present empirical evidence that this assumption fails for two of three instruction-following models evaluable for conflict detection.
  • We introduce governability -- the degree to which a model's errors are detectable before output commitment and correctable once detected -- and demonstrate it varies dramatically across models.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Validate inferred eval signals (Automatic metrics) against the full paper.
  • 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

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • We present empirical evidence that this assumption fails for two of three instruction-following models evaluable for conflict detection.
  • We introduce governability -- the degree to which a model's errors are detectable before output commitment and correctable once detected -- and demonstrate it varies dramatically across models.
  • We show benchmark accuracy does not predict governability, correction capacity varies independently of detection, and identical governance scaffolds produce opposite effects across models.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • As large language models are deployed as autonomous agents with tool execution privileges, a critical assumption underpins their security architecture: that model errors are detectable at runtime.
  • We show benchmark accuracy does not predict governability, correction capacity varies independently of detection, and identical governance scaffolds produce opposite effects across models.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Automatic Metrics

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Pass: Metric reporting is present

    Detected: accuracy

Related Papers

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

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