Monotonic safety degradation conjecture with outcome-dependent approval

Establish whether MONA’s safety degrades monotonically as the approval function becomes more dependent on achieved outcomes, thereby moving along the approval-construction spectrum toward outcome dependence.

Background

Appendix B.3 of the MONA paper describes a spectrum of approval constructions ranging from restrictive, prediction-based approval to outcome-dependent approval that approaches ordinary RL. Within this spectrum, the original work conjectures a monotonic relationship between outcome dependence and safety degradation.

This paper restates that conjecture and builds experimental tools intended to begin empirical characterization of this spectrum via learned approval proxies.