black box

Definition

A device — like an airplane's flight recorder — that captures what actually happened, separate from anyone's later recollection.

Used as analogy for a separate observation channel in safety architectures that records ground-truth behavior independent of the system's self-reports.

Mentioned in 3 episodes

1. 020
   The Compliance Gap: Why AI Says Yes and Does No
2. 019
   When the Best Reward Model Trains the Worst Policy: Inside EvoLM
3. 011
   When RL Actually Teaches Agents Something New, And When It Doesn't