Real-world data is frequently noisy and ambiguous. In crowd-sourcing, for example, human annotators may assign conflicting class labels to the same instances. Partial-label learning (PLL) addresses this challenge by training classifiers when each instance is associated with a set of candidate labels, only one of which is correct. While early PLL methods approximate the true label posterior, they are often computationally intensive. Recent deep learning approaches improve scalability but rely on surrogate losses and heuristic label refinement. We introduce a novel probabilistic framework that directly approximates the posterior distribution over true labels using amortized variational inference. Our method employs neural networks to predict variational parameters from input data, enabling efficient inference. This approach combines the expressiveness of deep learning with the rigor of probabilistic modeling, while remaining architecture-agnostic. Theoretical analysis and extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in both accuracy and efficiency.

Selective classifiers improve model reliability by abstaining on inputs the model deems uncertain. However, few practical approaches achieve the gold-standard performance of a perfect-ordering oracle that accepts examples exactly in order of correctness. Our work formalizes this shortfall as the selective-classification gap and present the first finite-sample decomposition of this gap to five distinct sources of looseness: Bayes noise, approximation error, ranking error, statistical noise, and implementation- or shift-induced slack. Crucially, our analysis reveals that monotone post-hoc calibration -- often believed to strengthen selective classifiers -- has limited impact on closing this gap, since it rarely alters the model's underlying score ranking. Bridging the gap therefore requires scoring mechanisms that can effectively reorder predictions rather than merely rescale them. We validate our decomposition on synthetic two-moons data and on real-world vision and language benchmarks, isolating each error component through controlled experiments. Our results confirm that (i) Bayes noise and limited model capacity can account for substantial gaps, (ii) only richer, feature-aware calibrators meaningfully improve score ordering, and (iii) data shift introduces a separate slack that demands distributionally robust training. Together, our decomposition yields a quantitative error budget as well as actionable design guidelines that practitioners can use to build selective classifiers which approximate ideal oracle behavior more closely.

Fake video walk-throughs, a magically expanding loft, and stair hallucinations are just some of the new AI-generated features house hunters are coming across. As you're hunting through real estate listings for a new home in Franklin, Tennessee, you come across a vertical video showing off expansive rooms featuring a four-poster bed, a fully stocked wine cellar, and a soaking tub. It looks perfect--maybe a little too perfect. Everything in the video is AI-generated . The real property is completely empty, and the luxury furniture is a product of virtual staging.

ChatGPT's new browser has potential, if you're willing to pay A few minutes into using ChatGPT Atlas, the new internet browser from OpenAI, I ran into quite a big road block. This isn't like Google Chrome, which is used by roughly 60% of people. It's all built around a chatbot you're meant to talk to to surf the web. Messages limit reached, read one note. No available models support the tools in use, said another.

Plus: Aura's new digital photo frame goes wireless, a mood-morphing watch, Wyze and TP-Link unveil solar-powered outdoor security cameras, and Intel will open "AI Experience Stores" in five cities. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. What are the odds that AI browsers launch in one week? OpenAI announced Atlas on Wednesday, a ChatGPT-powered Chromium browser, but a tiny startup called Nimo also debuted Nimo Infinity, a canvas-style AI browser with a generative user interface.

Plus: The Jaguar Land Rover hack sets an expensive new record, OpenAI's new Atlas browser raises security fears, Starlink cuts off scam compounds, and more. The cloud giant Amazon Web Services experienced DNS resolution issues on Monday leading to cascading outages that took down wide swaths of the web . Monday's meltdown illustrated the world's fundamental reliance on so-called hyperscalers like AWS and the challenges for major cloud providers and their customers alike when things go awry . See below for more about how the outage occurred. US Justice Department indictments in a mob-fueled gambling scam reverberated through the NBA on Thursday.

OpenAI's Atlas Wants to Be the Web's Tour Guide. In OpenAI's new Atlas browser, the Ask ChatGPT sidebar is moderately helpful at best. OpenAI's recently launched Atlas browser is a fascinating inversion of what users may expect from a browser, centering AI answers above traditional web links. Every click in a regular browser is a chance to see a new part of the web. Every click in Atlas is a chance to use ChatGPT .

'I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.' HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 'I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.' HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. AI models may be developing their own'survival drive', researchers say Like 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL 9000, some AIs seem to resist being turned off and will even sabotage shutdown When HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, works out that the astronauts onboard a mission to Jupiter are planning to shut it down, it plots to kill them in an attempt to survive. Now, in a somewhat less deadly case (so far) of life imitating art, an AI safety research company has said that AI models may be developing their own "survival drive". After Palisade Research released a paper last month which found that certain advanced AI models appear resistant to being turned off, at times even sabotaging shutdown mechanisms, it wrote an update attempting to clarify why this is - and answer critics who argued that its initial work was flawed.

Dave's Hot Chicken is the top app in the iOS App Store, ending Sora's weeks-long reign. On Friday, its reign came to an end. Your new champion is Dave's Hot Chicken. Dave's Hot Chicken now rules over the App Store, where its slack-beaked, bug-eyed mascot icon expresses appropriate surprise at its ascent. How did it break the grasp of OpenAI's golem TikTok?

Parents of Adam Raine update their lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the company twice relaxed ChatGPT safety protocols around suicide discussions before their son's death.