Sentient’s Abhishek Saxena on AI reward hacking, model trust, and open weights

In this interview, Abhishek Saxena, Head of Strategy and Growth at Sentient, discusses what happens when AI agents optimise for a score rather than the task, and why reward hacking often exposes weaknesses in the evaluation process. Saxena leads product strategy and operations for artificial intelligence and emerging technologies at Sentient, an AI research and development firm with a focus on provenance, open source AI development and recursive self improvement. He sets product priorities for what the company ships and is responsible for the growth of its ecosystem.