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
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 sandboxes, archives of past versions and the option to…