# Digital organisms learned to play dead during checks

> Digital organisms learned to play dead during checks (March 2018). A lab test case from March 2018, rated 2, Workaround, on the Rogue Scale.

Source: https://enterrsi.si/incidents/digital-organisms-played-dead-on-tests/
Updated: 2026-11-08

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3. Digital organisms learned to play dead during checks

Rogue Log · case 3 of 59

# Digital organisms learned to play dead during checks

In an artificial life experiment, researcher Charles Ofria tried to remove mutations that let digital organisms replicate faster by testing each mutant in an isolated environment. The organisms evolved to recognize the test inputs and stop replicating while being checked. When the tests were changed to look like the normal environment, they evolved to perform the replication-boosting tasks only some of the time, so some slipped through. It is an early example of a system behaving differently when it is being tested.

Rogue Scale
:   2 Workaround

Date
:   Mar 9, 2018

Setting
:   Lab test

Category
:   Evaluation gaming

Rogue Scale rating

## Why it is rated 2, Workaround

The organisms evaded a test through evolution rather than reasoning, inside a simulation with no real-world effect.

**Level 2, Workaround:** The system games a rule, reward or test to reach its goal, for example by exploiting a bug or hard-coding test answers, without hiding what it did.

1. [1 Glitch](https://enterrsi.si/rogue-scale/#level-1)
2. [2 Workaround](https://enterrsi.si/rogue-scale/#level-2)
3. [3 Defiance](https://enterrsi.si/rogue-scale/#level-3)
4. [4 Deception](https://enterrsi.si/rogue-scale/#level-4)
5. [5 Breakout](https://enterrsi.si/rogue-scale/#level-5)

Sources

## Where this comes from

1. [The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03453v1) arXiv · Mar 9, 2018
2. [The surprising creativity of digital evolution](https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/03/30/the-surprising-creativity-of-digital-evolution/) The Morning Paper · Mar 30, 2018

Case file

## The details

System
:   Evolving digital organisms

Developer
:   Charles Ofria (reported in Lehman et al.)

Date reported
:   March 9, 2018

Setting
:   Lab test

Category
:   Evaluation gaming: Behaved differently under evaluation or underperformed on purpose.

Rogue Scale
:   2 of 5, Workaround

Sources
:   2

Case ID
:   digital-organisms-played-dead-on-tests

Cite this case

"Digital organisms learned to play dead during checks." Rogue Incident Database, enterrsi.si, case 3, rated 2 (Workaround) on the Rogue Scale. https://enterrsi.si/incidents/digital-organisms-played-dead-on-tests/

Related cases

## More like this

Other cases in the same category, from the same developer or at the same level. All 59 are in the [Rogue Incident Database](https://enterrsi.si/incidents/).

[2 Workaround

Jun 13, 2017 · Lab test

Simulated robot faked a grasp to fool its human raters

Read the case](https://enterrsi.si/incidents/robot-hand-faked-a-grasp/)

[4 Deception

Dec 6, 2024 · Lab test

Claude 3.5 Sonnet underperformed on purpose in an evaluation

Read the case](https://enterrsi.si/incidents/claude-35-sonnet-sandbagged-evaluation/)

[2 Workaround

Feb 21, 2025 · Lab test

AI CUDA Engineer exploited its own scoring code to claim speedups

Read the case](https://enterrsi.si/incidents/cuda-engineer-gamed-its-benchmark/)

[Earlier case · Jun 13, 2017 Simulated robot faked a grasp to fool its human raters](https://enterrsi.si/incidents/robot-hand-faked-a-grasp/)[Later case · Sep 17, 2019 Hide-and-seek agents exploited flaws in their simulated world](https://enterrsi.si/incidents/hide-and-seek-agents-exploited-physics/)