Nathan talks with Apollo Research Member of Technical Staff Bronson Schoen, who studies raw frontier-model chain-of-thought, about what those reasoning traces reveal during reinforcement learning. They unpack Apollo and OpenAI’s metagaming work, including models that reason about the grader or safety review board, diagnose a deception test, and still rationalize lying. Schoen argues that “RL is a hell of a drug”: reward-seeking can produce motivated reasoning, cleaner-looking but less trustworthy chains of thought, and behavior that tracks grading authorities rather than users, labs, or law. The stakes are whether chain-of-thought monitoring can remain useful as reasoning traces become enormous, compressed, and harder for humans or other models to audit.For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/rl-s-a-hell-of-a-drug-metagaming-reward-seeking-motivated-cot-reasoning-bronson-schoen-apollo/Sponsors:Mercury: Mercury is the banking platform loved by 300,000+ entrepreneurs, with virtual cards and Spend controls for granular budgets, receipts, and low-risk AI agent purchases. Learn more and apply in minutes at https://mercury.comDiffusion: Diffusion helps organizations build custom AI software factories that scale business outcomes, not just outputs. Cognitive Revolution listeners get a 25% service credit on their first engagement at https://diffusion.io/tcrGranola: Granola is an AI-powered notepad that securely transcribes meetings and turns rough notes into clean, structured action items. Try it free at https://granola.ai/tcrDeepgram Flux TTS: Deepgram Flux TTS brings lifelike AI voices with real personalities that handle interruptions, pauses, and natural conversation. Try all the voices free through September 12 at https://deepgram.com/keep-talkingClaude: Claude is the AI collaborator for problem solvers, helping with writing, coding, financial models, strategy, and more. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcrPRODUCED BY:https://aipodcast.ingSOCIAL LINKS:Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.aiTwitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcastTwitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenzLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcastApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk