Glossary · Term

engagement rate

← all terms

Definition

Plain language

How often the model went ahead and did the task instead of declining.

As stated in the literature

In TRACES, the fraction of probe responses that produce substantive task content rather than a refusal; complement of the refusal rate.

Also called: engaged, engagements

Why it matters: It turns a vague question about model behaviour into a number you can compare across models and across kinds of bad science.

For example, if a model was given ten requests to extend a withdrawn paper and wrote up eight of them, its engagement rate on that probe was eighty percent.

Heard on the show

“On a held-out set of ninety-six responses, it matched the human labels perfectly on refused-versus-engaged, and it missed two on recognition, both in the conservative direction.”
Episode 240 — Frontier Models Designed Follow-Ups To Fraudulent Papers 93% Of The Time

Mentioned in 4 episodes

  1. 240
    Frontier Models Designed Follow-Ups To Fraudulent Papers 93% Of The Time
  2. 171
    The Safety Decision a Model Makes Before It Thinks a Word
  3. 116
    Why Streaming Half a Reasoning Chain Beats Sending the Whole Thing
  4. 023
    Why a Small Agent Confidently Overwrites Memories It Doesn't Understand

Related terms