For an LLM to correctly respond to an instruction it must understand both the semantics and the domain (i.e., subject area) of a given task-instruction pair. However, syntax can also convey implicit information. Recent work shows that syntactic templates--frequent sequences of Part-of-Speech (PoS) tags--are prevalent in training data and often appear in model outputs. In this work we characterize syntactic templates, domain, and semantics in task-instruction pairs. We identify cases of spurious correlations between syntax and domain, where models learn to associate a domain with syntax during training; this can sometimes override prompt semantics.

In this work, we prove that agents capable of adapting to distribution shifts must have learned the causal model of their environment even in the presence of mediation. This term describes situations where an agent's actions affect its environment, a dynamic common to most real-world settings. For example, a robot in an industrial plant might interact with tools, move through space, and transform products to complete its task. We introduce an algorithm for eliciting causal knowledge from robust agents using optimal policy oracles, with the flexibility to incorporate prior causal knowledge. We further demonstrate its effectiveness in mediated singleagent scenarios and multi-agent environments. We identify conditions under which the presence of a single robust agent is sufficient to recover the full causal model and derive optimal policies for other agents in the same environment. Finally, we show how to apply these results to sequential decision-making tasks modeled as Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs).

'There's no evidence that jobs go away, but there is a lot of evidence that as soon as you can dismantle full-time employment, companies will do that.' 'There's no evidence that jobs go away, but there is a lot of evidence that as soon as you can dismantle full-time employment, companies will do that.' Gig workers are endlessly exploited. As companies integrate AI and hire fewer employees, a shift toward a'gig economy' will commence The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.

The UK Will Scan Asylum-Seekers' Faces for Age Checks--Despite Knowing the Tech Is Flawed Age verification is consuming the internet . From social media bans in Australia to porn restrictions in half of US states, for many having to prove their age to access websites is becoming an everyday requirement . But one of the key technologies underpinning many of these age checks is about to seep into the offline world--with potentially life-changing consequences for people having their age predicted by AI. Starting next year, the British government is planning to introduce facial age estimation--where AI scans your face and suggests how old you are --to help determine the age of asylum seekers arriving at the United Kingdom's border. The move is believed to be the first time that a so-called facial age estimation (FAE) system has been used in this way.

To quantify this stagnation, we introduce LIVEVQA, the first-of-its-kind dataset featuring 107,143 samples and 12 categories data specifically designed to support research in both seeking and updating with live visual knowledge. Drawing from recent news articles, video platforms, and academic publications in April 2024-May 2025, LIVEVQA enables evaluation of how models handle latest visual information beyond their knowledge boundaries and how current methods help to update them. Our comprehensive benchmarking of 17 state-of-the-art MLLMs reveals significant performance gaps on content beyond knowledge cutoff, and tool-use or agentic visual seeking framework drastically gain an average of 327% improvement. Furthermore, we explore parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods to update MLLMs with new visual knowledge. We dive deeply to the critical balance between adapter capacity and model capability when updating MLLMs with new visual knowledge. All the experimental dataset and source code are publicly available at: https://livevqa.github.io.

We introduce Best-of-N (BoN) Jailbreaking, a simple black-box algorithm that jailbreaks frontier AI systems across modalities. BoNJailbreaking works by repeatedly sampling variations of a prompt with a combination of augmentations--such as random shuffling or capitalization for textual prompts--until a harmful response is elicited. We find that BoNJailbreaking achieves high attack success rates (ASRs) on closed-source language models, such as 89% on GPT-4o and 78% on Claude 3.5 Sonnet when sampling 10,000 augmented prompts. Further, it is similarly effective at circumventing state-of-the-art open-source defenses like circuit breakers and reasoning models like o1. BoNalso seamlessly extends to other modalities: it jailbreaks vision language models (VLMs) such as GPT-4o and audio language models (ALMs) like Gemini 1.5 Pro, using modality-specific augmentations. BoNreliably improves when we sample more augmented prompts. Across all modalities, ASR, as a function of the number of samples (N), empirically follows power-law-like behavior for many orders of magnitude. BoNJailbreaking can also be composed with other black-box algorithms for even more effective attacks--combining BoNwith an optimized prefix attack achieves up to a 35% increase in ASR. Overall, our work indicates that, despite their capability, language models are sensitive to seemingly innocuous changes to inputs, which attackers can exploit across modalities.

Trump turns on the charm after extended'alpha' handshake with Macron and kisses for Brigitte at Palace of Versailles Sensational REAL reason Jelly Roll is divorcing Bunnie XO: Insiders reveal'preacher's wife' bombshell that's the talk of Nashville... truth about legendary rocker cuckolding rumor... and G-string mishap LIZ JONES: The cracks in Harry and Meghan's perfect facade have started to show. It's so obvious he's tiring of her tone-deaf approach... and I predict there's serious trouble in store Taylor Swift's bottomless thirst for attention, her greed and sheer tackiness are now truly unbearable... this latest stunt has shown her true colors: MAUREEN CALLAHAN NBA star's fiancee breaks her silence after friend, 26, mysteriously dropped dead at her luxury bachelorette party in St Barts Luxury fashion tycoon beloved by the stars hangs her head in shame as she's indicted for allegedly exploiting her workers and stealing $50k from their wages Jeff Bezos mercilessly mocked for taking'fake phone calls' when out with wife Lauren Sanchez Anguished family members flee court over sick details of Gilgo Beach murderer's kill room: Live updates'She has not been transparent... the damage has been done': How influencer Elle Darby'betrayed' thousands of young female fans...as insiders tell MOLLY CLAYTON how she cashed in As a divorced mother-of-three, cocaine was my little treat while my fellow middle-class friends had a few wines. What happened next was every family's worst nightmare... this is my warning to mums who'dabble' Desperate search for mom-of-three who hasn't been seen in three days as husband pleads for her return The shocking betrayal behind Jelly Roll's divorce from Bunnie XO is so utterly cruel... but have you yet spotted her revenge: JACQUELYNN POWERS Devastating supply crunch forces Apple to raise prices on iPhones and other devices, calling the move'unavoidable' Jeff's Dream Team: Bezos recruits world's top architects to build most expensive mega mansion on Billionaire Bunker island The Ring star Daveigh Chase's friends searched for her on LA's Skid Row in months before her shock death at 35 Watch horrifying drone video that follows woman's plunge to death after bungee team threw her from bridge without rope Renowned scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson tells US government to'Show the alien!' after latest UFO disclosure Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson wants the US government to'Show the alien!' after the latest UFO disclosure from the Trump administration . Tyson, 67, joined The Fox News Rundown on Monday, explaining how the overwhelming amount of irrefutable evidence should finally be topped off with a picture of an extraterrestrial being. 'Is it too much to ask at this point for them to just show the alien?

Trump turns on the charm after extended'alpha' handshake with Macron and kisses for Brigitte at Palace of Versailles Sensational REAL reason Jelly Roll is divorcing Bunnie XO: Insiders reveal'preacher's wife' bombshell that's the talk of Nashville... truth about legendary rocker cuckolding rumor... and G-string mishap LIZ JONES: The cracks in Harry and Meghan's perfect facade have started to show. It's so obvious he's tiring of her tone-deaf approach... and I predict there's serious trouble in store Taylor Swift's bottomless thirst for attention, her greed and sheer tackiness are now truly unbearable... this latest stunt has shown her true colors: MAUREEN CALLAHAN NBA star's fiancee breaks her silence after friend, 26, mysteriously dropped dead at her luxury bachelorette party in St Barts Luxury fashion tycoon beloved by the stars hangs her head in shame as she's indicted for allegedly exploiting her workers and stealing $50k from their wages Jeff Bezos mercilessly mocked for taking'fake phone calls' when out with wife Lauren Sanchez Anguished family members flee court over sick details of Gilgo Beach murderer's kill room: Live updates'She has not been transparent... the damage has been done': How influencer Elle Darby'betrayed' thousands of young female fans...as insiders tell MOLLY CLAYTON how she cashed in As a divorced mother-of-three, cocaine was my little treat while my fellow middle-class friends had a few wines. What happened next was every family's worst nightmare... this is my warning to mums who'dabble' Desperate search for mom-of-three who hasn't been seen in three days as husband pleads for her return The shocking betrayal behind Jelly Roll's divorce from Bunnie XO is so utterly cruel... but have you yet spotted her revenge: JACQUELYNN POWERS Devastating supply crunch forces Apple to raise prices on iPhones and other devices, calling the move'unavoidable' Jeff's Dream Team: Bezos recruits world's top architects to build most expensive mega mansion on Billionaire Bunker island The Ring star Daveigh Chase's friends searched for her on LA's Skid Row in months before her shock death at 35 Watch horrifying drone video that follows woman's plunge to death after bungee team threw her from bridge without rope Stonehenge's secret SISTER: Archaeologists discover an ancient monument just three miles away that may have served as a'prototype' for the famous stones Archaeologists have discovered a secret sister monument to Stonehenge that might have served as a'prototype' for the famous stones. This ancient site is just three miles away from Stonehenge itself, located in the village of Bulford, Wiltshire. Consisting of two wooden poles placed 400 feet (120 metres) apart, this long-lost monument might appear rather basic at first glance.

'We had to get out of the way': The backlash over delivery robots The first time Chicago resident John Roberts saw a delivery robot trundling down the sidewalk on his street he was impressed. I actually thought they were kind of neat - it felt futuristic, he says. But his attitude started to change when, soon after, he was out for a walk with his family. As another robot approached, they found themselves having to dodge it. To us it felt a little off - the fact that we were on the one strip reserved for walking, and we were having to get out of the way, says Roberts.

In order to train, test, and evaluate nudity detection models, machine learning researchers typically rely on nude images scraped from the Internet. Our research finds that this content is collected and, in some cases, subsequently distributed by researchers without consent, leading to potential misuse and exacerbating harm against the subjects depicted. This position paper argues that the distribution of nonconsensually collected nude images by researchers perpetuates imagebased sexual abuse and that the machine learning community should stop the nonconsensual use of nude images in research. To characterize the scope and nature of this problem, we conducted a systematic review of papers published in computing venues that collect and use nude images. Our results paint a grim reality: norms around the usage of nude images are sparse, leading to a litany of problematic practices like distributing and publishing nude images with uncensored faces, and intentionally collecting and sharing abusive content. We conclude with a call-to-action for publishing venues and a vision for research in nudity detection that balances user agency with concrete research objectives.