Position: Behavioural Assurance Cannot Verify the Safety Claims Governance Now Demands

This position paper argues that behavioural assurance, even when carefully designed, is being asked to carry safety claims it cannot verify. AI governance frameworks enacted between 2019 and early 2026 require reviewable evidence of properties such as the absence of hidden objectives, resistance to loss-of-control precursors, and bounded catastrophic capability; current assurance methodologies (primarily behavioural evaluations and red-teaming) are epistemically limited to observable model outpu

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ethics.ai (14 May 2026), “Position: Behavioural Assurance Cannot Verify the Safety Claims Governance Now Demands,” evidence record 4314, https://ethics.ai/record/4314 (originally published by arXiv).

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