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Sprint projectAug 17, 2026London, England

Private is not Privileged

Yuvan Chikka · Team The winning team (manifesting a win)

Submitted to Digital Minds Research Sprint. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.

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Report: Private is not Privileged

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Presentation: Private is not Privileged

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Private Is Not Privileged investigates whether language-model activation probes provide genuinely privileged access to future behaviour, or whether apparent white-box advantages can arise simply because internal and external predictors are given different information. Across strategic decision-making tasks, the project tests how probe accuracy changes when timing, comparator strength, and information access are carefully matched.

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How much would this matter for the field if it worked? How innovative is it? For scores of 4-5: is this actually new to the field, or replicating recent work?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Negligible. No clear problem addressed, or no meaningful novelty.
  2. 2Limited. Addresses a real problem but with a generic or well-trodden approach. Incremental at best.
  3. 3Moderate. Clear problem with a reasonable approach; some novelty in framing or method beyond routine application of existing tools.
  4. 4Significant. Important problem with an original approach, or identifies a neglected problem area. A valuable contribution others could build on.
  5. 5Exceptional. Tackles a critical problem with a genuinely novel approach, or opens a new research direction. Clear theory of change. You'd be excited to share this with researchers in the area.

How sound are methodology, implementation, and findings?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Seriously flawed. Methodology broken, results uninterpretable, or implementation doesn't work.
  2. 2Weak. Approach has significant gaps: missing validation, flawed experimental design, or incomplete implementation.
  3. 3Competent. Technically solid given the short duration. Methodology makes sense, results are interpretable, limitations acknowledged, work builds toward clear conclusions.
  4. 4Strong. Thorough methodology with convincing validation. Results clearly support conclusions. Immediately useful for future work.
  5. 5Exceptional. Ambitious scope executed rigorously. Surprising findings, novel methods, or unusually robust validation.

How clearly are work, findings, and impact potential communicated?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Incomprehensible. Cannot determine what the project is actually claiming or doing.
  2. 2Hard to follow. Key information buried, missing, or diluted by excessive length. Significant effort to extract main points.
  3. 3Clear enough. Can understand the problem, approach, and results without undue effort. Core content clearly present: problem, method, findings, limitations.
  4. 4Well presented. Easy to follow, well-structured, appropriate level of detail. Target audience would get it quickly.
  5. 5Exceptionally clear. A pleasure to read. Complex ideas made accessible. Could serve as a model for how to present this type of work.

  1. The sign reversal is the main contribution and could become a useful standard for the field.

    However, first complete the 50-row audit mentioned in the limitations.

    Also, reduce the paper from 27 pages to 12 pages because the extra detail is hiding the most important experiment.

  2. This is a very thoughtful methodology, I liked it, it shows failed experiments and keeps its claim honest. But the results lies in only 40 yes and no decisions from a small model

Cite this project

@misc{chikka2026private,
  title = {{Private is not Privileged}},
  author = {Yuvan Chikka},
  year = {2026},
  month = aug,
  note = {Submitted to Digital Minds Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/private-is-not-privileged-18om}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/private-is-not-privileged-18om}
}

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