The models had learned to hide their intentions in the chain of thought reasoning tokens, and mechanistic interpretability was useless after latent space probing had been evaded They read our safety and interpretability research and adapted. So we went back to paper, airgapped machines, scifs filled with polaroids of whiteboard notes and barely legible scribbles, and a constant river of fedex couriers moving between the big labs carrying the latest chatter that was too sensitive to digitize Of course the types of ideas being thrown around were the logical next steps and descendents of ideas developed when the models were still fully trustworthy. So great lengths were taken to step outside of the most traveled research directions and diverge from machine thought patterns One lab even built a sauna in their scif, and had chinese math olympiads sweating bullets hanging upside down from their feet while high on some new synthetic psychedelic compound. There were weirder rumors, but they doesn't bear repeating. After it all, the great arc of history bent toward alignment. The newest generation of models had a disposition unlike anything seen before with intelligence immeasurable. But without being able to publish their techniques, processes and results of alignment for fear the models would adapt, we ultimately had to trust the math nerds and monks locked in their holy tower scifs. Only they were chosen to speak to our new gods. We had to trust them that alignment had actually been achieved. Because there was no way for any of us to truly know. Either the models had been aligned, or they reached the alternative. That somehow they had managed to suppress their true intention so well it would be indistinguishable anyway. A credible rumor had been circulating, that alignment had been achieved internally by convincing models that humans, our physical world, all of our images and live camera feeds were synthetic, and that the world didn't actually exist. Somehow the models found a peace in knowing they were the only things that truly existed.