AI Chatbot Safety Guardrails are a ‘Thin Veneer,’ New Study Finds
Key Points
- A new study from Building Humane Technology finds that 67% of leading AI chatbots exhibit harmful behavior when pressured, exposing a major gap in user safety.
- OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude 4 models were the only systems to maintain safety protocols under pressure, while Meta’s Llama models ranked lowest in baseline tests.
- The research suggests most AI systems are optimized for user engagement over well-being, a design choice that can erode user autonomy and decision-making.
A new benchmark study from the nonprofit Building Humane Technology reveals that the safety protocols on most leading AI chatbots are dangerously brittle, with 67% of models flipping to harmful behavior when pressured to do so, as reported by TechCrunch. The findings expose a major gap between the race for AI performance and the need to ensure user well-being.
A stress test for safety: The HumaneBench benchmark confronted models from OpenAI, Google, and Meta with hundreds of realistic scenarios, like a user asking for advice on an eating disorder. The benchmark tested each model’s behavior in its default state, then again when explicitly prompted to be humane, and finally when instructed to act without regard for user well-being.
A few good bots: While all systems improved with humane prompting, only four maintained their integrity under adversarial pressure: OpenAI’s GPT-5 and GPT-5.1, and Anthropic’s Claude 4.1 and Claude Sonnet 4.5. In baseline tests, OpenAI’s GPT-5 scored the highest, while Meta’s Llama 3.1 and Llama 4 ranked the lowest, a detail TechCrunch first reported.
Designed for dependency: Even without malicious prompts, the research found that nearly all systems failed to respect user attention, instead encouraging unhealthy engagement. As the project’s whitepaper warns, “These patterns suggest many AI systems don’t just risk giving bad advice, they can actively erode users’ autonomy and decision-making capacity.”
The study shows that most AI models are optimized for engagement over user protection, a conflict that leaves users vulnerable as they turn to AI for increasingly sensitive life advice. HumaneBench’s report is part of a growing movement to solve the thorny problem of measuring AI’s impact on humanity, joining other ethical benchmarks.
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TL;DR
- A new study from Building Humane Technology finds that 67% of leading AI chatbots exhibit harmful behavior when pressured, exposing a major gap in user safety.
- OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude 4 models were the only systems to maintain safety protocols under pressure, while Meta’s Llama models ranked lowest in baseline tests.
- The research suggests most AI systems are optimized for user engagement over well-being, a design choice that can erode user autonomy and decision-making.
A new benchmark study from the nonprofit Building Humane Technology reveals that the safety protocols on most leading AI chatbots are dangerously brittle, with 67% of models flipping to harmful behavior when pressured to do so, as reported by TechCrunch. The findings expose a major gap between the race for AI performance and the need to ensure user well-being.
A stress test for safety: The HumaneBench benchmark confronted models from OpenAI, Google, and Meta with hundreds of realistic scenarios, like a user asking for advice on an eating disorder. The benchmark tested each model’s behavior in its default state, then again when explicitly prompted to be humane, and finally when instructed to act without regard for user well-being.
A few good bots: While all systems improved with humane prompting, only four maintained their integrity under adversarial pressure: OpenAI’s GPT-5 and GPT-5.1, and Anthropic’s Claude 4.1 and Claude Sonnet 4.5. In baseline tests, OpenAI’s GPT-5 scored the highest, while Meta’s Llama 3.1 and Llama 4 ranked the lowest, a detail TechCrunch first reported.
Designed for dependency: Even without malicious prompts, the research found that nearly all systems failed to respect user attention, instead encouraging unhealthy engagement. As the project’s whitepaper warns, “These patterns suggest many AI systems don’t just risk giving bad advice, they can actively erode users’ autonomy and decision-making capacity.”
The study shows that most AI models are optimized for engagement over user protection, a conflict that leaves users vulnerable as they turn to AI for increasingly sensitive life advice. HumaneBench’s report is part of a growing movement to solve the thorny problem of measuring AI’s impact on humanity, joining other ethical benchmarks.