Is benchmarking AI capabilities positive EV?

By Charlie_Guthmann @ 2026-02-17T22:30 (+23)

I think this discussion was had on LW a few years ago (and probably sporadically since then). Just quickly some parameters off the top of my head.

Pro:

Improves Forecasting
Necessary infrastructure for a variety of verification tech that will be needed for international treaties
Know when to sound alarm bells
Helps us know what type of defensive technologies we need to build

Cons:

Increases the speed of ai development
Unclear if US and China are even interested in coordinating
Unclear if a number from a eval will be enough to cause significant political pressure

Unsure

Depending on trajectory of benchmarking, builds/kills hype and reduces/increases investment.

MichaelDickens @ 2026-02-18T01:05 (+9)

Know when to sound alarm bells

What is the situation where people coordinate to sound alarm bells over an AI benchmark? I basically don't think people pay attention to benchmarks in the way that matters: a benchmark comes out demonstrating some new potential danger, AI safety people raise concerns about it, and the people with the actual power continue to ignore them.

Thinking of some historical examples:

Anthropic's findings on alignment faking should have alerted people that AI is too dangerous to keep building, but it didn't.
Anthropic/OpenAI recently finding that their latest models may cross ASL-4 / CBRN thresholds should've been an alarm bell that they can't release those models, but they released them anyway and nobody could do anything to stop them.

MichaelDickens @ 2026-02-18T01:09 (+8)

A relevant question I'm not sure about: for people who talk to politicians about AI risk, how useful are benchmarks? I'm not involved in those conversations so I can't really say. My guess is that politicians are more interested in obvious capabilities (e.g. Claude can write good code now) than they are in benchmark performance.

NickLaing @ 2026-02-18T07:46 (+7)

I think its incredibly hard to determine, but probably negative EV, as has been the history (IMO) of many (perhaps even most?) EA AI safety interventions. Well intended but for-the-worse-in-the-end. As a side note, I think the history of EA intervention in AI is a great example of just how hard it is to intentionally positively influence even the mid-term future.

It would only be positive if it actually contributed to some kind of slowdown or policy change, which seems pretty unlikely to me. I don't think an eval reslut will ever sound an alarm bell, that would only come from some kind of obvious capability shift or warning shot that affected the general public.

More likely is that it slightly speeds up AI development basically like @MichaelDickens said.

1. Adding to the race dynamic with the clear targets and competition to be at the 'top'
2. Giving AI companies better tools to measure progress
3. Incentivising investment

MichaelDickens @ 2026-02-18T00:57 (+4)

Increases the speed of ai development

This is the biggest con by far. There are at least two mechanisms by which it could happen:

Make AI capabilities growth more apparent, incentivizing investment.
Help AI companies learn how to build more powerful AI systems.