Decoder. plain-English AI glossary

Red-team evaluation

▲ Rising

Having human experts intentionally try to break your system to find real-world vulnerabilities before users find them.

Think of it like

A professional locksmith trying to pick your locks to show you weaknesses.

Example

A safety-specialized contractor generates 100 prompts designed to make a language model refuse to help or produce harmful content, testing your safety guardrails.

How it actually works

Red-teaming is expensive but produces creative attacks. Humans find vulnerabilities that automated tests miss. The downside: red-teaming doesn't scale, takes weeks, and teams can have blind spots. Best practice: combine human red-teaming with automated testing.

For product teams

Budget for it before launch, especially on safety-critical features.

For engineers

Partner with red-team experts. Log and triage findings. Iterate on mitigations.

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