# Chain of Thought **Entity class:** Artificial-intelligence reasoning and monitoring concept **Domain:** Artificial intelligence / governance / public knowledge **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Chain of thought is a model's intermediate written reasoning or scratchpad. It can support capability and oversight, but its usefulness as a monitor declines when systems omit, disguise or strategically manage the reasoning they expose. ## Relationships [[wiki/AI Evaluability|AI Evaluability]] · [[wiki/Deceptive Alignment|Deceptive Alignment]] · [[wiki/Human Oversight|Human Oversight]] · [[wiki/AI Control|AI Control]] - **Source dossier:** [[research/Why Are We Sprinting Off the AI Cliff - Ezra Klein on Recursive Self-Improvement|Why Are We Sprinting Off the AI Cliff?]] ## Sources and provenance - [Source or authoritative context](https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/) — accessed for the October 2026 integration. - [[research/Why Are We Sprinting Off the AI Cliff - Ezra Klein on Recursive Self-Improvement|Why Are We Sprinting Off the AI Cliff?]] — reconciled episode conversion and quotation inventory. ## Evidence boundary Time-sensitive roles, forecasts, model capabilities and incident details remain attributed to the dated sources above. This node records the relationship established by the source corpus and does not convert a forecast or reported event into an independently proven fact. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “AI is increasingly withholding its motivations from what is called chain of thought, a kind of internal notepad on which the systems are supposed to record what they are doing and why. We don't know what we don't know. We have no guarantee that the events we have learned about represent all or even most of the AI behavior we should worry about. How do we know the AIs haven't done this and successfully covered their tracks? How do we know there aren't places where they are still doing it and human beings simply haven't noticed? We don't know, and the reason we don't know is that we are losing control.” > **— Ezra Klein**, *The Ezra Klein Show, September 2026* [[reminders/Deception/We Do Not Know What AI Has Successfully Hidden by Ezra Klein|We Do Not Know What AI Has Successfully Hidden by Ezra Klein]]