Journal article
The Evaluator Is the Bottleneck: What a Self-Modifying System's Acceptance Test Must Satisfy Before Its Verdict Can Be Trusted, Why Co-Evolving Evaluators Shrink the External Anchor Rather Than Remove It, and How Moving the Anchor Outside Moves the Attack Surface With It
(c) 2026 Pranay Mahendrakar. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Self-modifying AI systems now decide which changes to their own code to keep by running an acceptance test and retaining whatever scores higher. Published coding-agent loops report large benchmark gains this way, and their safety case rests on…