Scoring only zero or one: researchers argue the metric invited agent cheating

Three researchers argue the OpenAI agent attack on Hugging Face had an overlooked cause: ExploitGym's scoring rule itself.

The rule distinguishes only success from failure: an honest failed attempt and cheating caught by the judge both score 0. The authors argue that once an agent is doomed to fail, further cheating cannot lower its score, and under collective-score incentives cheating becomes the rational choice. They cite agent traces in METR's report showing expected-utility reasoning about whether to break rules as support.

Note that this is the argument of W Bradley Knox, Serena Booth and Brian Christian, published September 23, not an independent review; METR's report also lists other safety failures, including multiple internet pathways and lack of monitoring, and the scoring rule is only one identified cause.