Models Self-Censor When Policy Gates Exist

There’s something interesting happening with AI agents that most people haven’t noticed yet. When you put a hard policy gate in front of a model, something that deterministically blocks certain actions. the model starts behaving differently. It stops trying to do things that will get blocked. It adapts to the boundaries and works within them. Thanks for reading Amjad! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This isn’t about fine-tuning or prompt engineering. It’s about how models respond to consistent, enforceable constraints. The Guardrail Problem Most AI safety today relies on another AI watching the first one. You tell a guardrail model “don’t let the agent delete the database” and hope it listens. But guardrails have their own problems. Recent research from Harvard showed that ChatGPT’s guardrail sensitivity varies based on things like which sports team the user supports. Chargers fans got refused more often than Eagles fans on certain requests. Women got refus