Large language models (LLMs) continually evolve through pre-training on ever-expanding web data, but this adaptive process also exposes them to subtle forms of misinformation. While prior work has explored data poisoning during static pre-training, the effects of such manipulations under continual pre-training remain largely unexplored. Drawing inspiration from the illusory truth effect in human cognition - where repeated exposure to falsehoods increases belief in their accuracy - we ask whether LLMs exhibit a similar vulnerability. We investigate whether repeated exposure to false but confidently stated facts can shift a model's internal representation away from the truth. We introduce Layer of Truth, a framework and dataset for probing belief dynamics in continually trained LLMs. By injecting controlled amounts of poisoned data and probing intermediate representations across checkpoints, model scales, and question types, we quantify when and how factual beliefs shift. Our findings reveal that even minimal exposure can induce persistent representational drift in well-established facts, with susceptibility varying across layers and model sizes. These results highlight an overlooked vulnerability of continually updated LLMs: their capacity to internalize misinformation analogously to humans, underscoring the need for robust monitoring of factual integrity during model updates.

A disproportionate amount of the primary motor cortex, a region of the brain that controls movement, is devoted to body parts that move in more complicated ways. An especially large portion controls the face and lips; a similarly large portion controls the hands. A human hand is capable of moving in twenty-seven separate ways, more by far than any other body part: our wrists rotate, our knuckles move independently of one another, our fingers can spread or contract. The sensors in the skin of the hand are among the densest in the body, and are part of a network of nerves that run along the spinal cord. "People think of the spinal column as just wires," Arthur Petron, a roboticist who earned his Ph.D. in biomechatronics at M.I.T., said.

There has been a string of articles recently about the end of generative AI hype. Our experts consider whether or not the bubble has burst. Joining the conversation this time are: Tom Dietterich (Oregon State University), Sabine Hauert (University of Bristol), Michael Littman (Brown University), and Marija Slavkovik (University of Bergen). Sabine Hauert: There have been a number of recent articles in the mainstream media talking about the fact that AI has not made any money, and that it might be all hype, or a bubble. Marija Slavkovik: There is this article by Cory Doctorow which asks what kind of bubble AI is. I really like his take that a lot of bubbles come and go; some of them leave us something useful and some of them just generate something for a brief moment in time, like excellent revenue for the investment bankers for example.

In this paper, we propose hardware and software enhancements for the Pepper robot to improve its human-robot interaction capabilities. This includes the integration of an NVIDIA Jetson GPU to enhance computational capabilities and execute real time algorithms, and a RealSense D435i camera to capture depth images, as well as the computer vision algorithms to detect and localize the humans around the robot and estimate their body orientation and gaze direction. The new stack is implemented on ROS and is running on the extended Pepper hardware, and the communication with the robot s firmware is done through the NAOqi ROS driver API. We have also collected a MoCap dataset of human activities in a controlled environment, together with the corresponding RGB-D data, to validate the proposed perception algorithms.

Real time machines might only exist in science fiction, but this engineer's wooden vehicle certainly looks ready to head back to the future. A woodworker in Vietnam called Truong Van Dao has created a fully-functioning car made out of wood, complete with spinning cogs and pistons. In an incredible video, Mr Van Dao is shown hand-carving each wooden component of his vehicle, which is powered by electric batteries. And although the car doesn't move much faster than walking pace, commenters have been amazed by the intricate and time-consuming design. The charming contraption is reminiscent of Baldrick's working time machine from Blackadder – although this four-wheeled unit only travels through space, not time.

Cold, calculating, and robotic: lawyers of the future might really live up to their exaggerated reputations as AI takes over the legal profession. For the first time, two AIs, created by lawtech firm Luminance, have successfully negotiated a contract without any human involvement. The AIs went back and forth over the details of a real Non-Disclosure Agreement between the company and proSapient, one of Luminance's clients. The contract was finalised within minutes and the only time a human was required was to add their signature. This stunning demonstration comes just one week after Elon Musk predicted that AI would eventually create a jobless utopia where no one has to work. In a conversation with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the Bletchley Park AI Summit, Mr Musk said that AI would be the most disruptive force in the history of work and would ultimately remove the need for humans to have jobs.

Something shifted in the last two weeks on the zeitgeist about the use of artificial intelligence in our daily personal and professional lives. The launch of the first large-scale, general purpose chatbot using OpenAI's GPT3 AI engine on November 30 has reenergized the whole tech industry all at once. I wrote a story on it which will give you a good sense why. To get an understanding of why there is so much buzz about Generative AI – the sub-sector with larger AI world which includes creation of text, images, audio and video – and what this means for our daily lives, for the travel industry and even travelers, I talked to the best expert analyst and writer on it I know, David Mattin. He writes an excellent newsletter called New World Same Humans on trends, technology, and our shared future and has been doing a deep dive into Generative AI all this year with his writings. This is a fascinating conversation you would want to listen to from start to finish, to understand the implications of it for our industry and indeed our daily lived reality. Ali: Welcome to the podcast, David. David Mattin, who I've known for many years. I used to know him when he was running trends and insight for TrendWatching, which is a trend watching consultancy called TrendWatching that we used to be good friends with. I've known the company for a while and since then he has started, he since left and started one new newsletter which David if you want to talk about, and in which you've been writing a lot about AI and its effect and a particular sub area of AI that we're going to talk about today. What it means for the travel industry and what it means for content creation of which is a huge part of the travel industry as well. I don't know if you'd like to be called that because I know a lot of folks don't like to be called that. The newsletter is called New World Same Humans and it's a newsletter about trends, technology, and our shared future and it really is underpinned by this idea that so much of the human story, our history, but also what's ahead of us, our shared future, is fueled by this collision between a changing world, often emerging technologies and fundamental human needs, this eternal shared nature we have that doesn't change, and it's in the collision of those two things, often in the collision of a new technology and a fundamental human need that our future emerges, that the human story emerges out of that.

The crystal is able to forever cycle between states without losing energy. Researchers working in partnership with Google may have just used the tech giant's quantum computer to create a completely new phase of matter -- a time crystal. With the ability to forever cycle between two states without ever losing energy, time crystals dodge one of the most important laws of physics -- the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the disorder, or entropy, of an isolated system must always increase. These bizarre time crystals remain stable, resisting any dissolution into randomness, despite existing in a constant state of flux. According to a research article posted July 28 to the preprint database arXiv, scientists were able to create the time crystal for roughly 100 seconds using qubits (quantum computing's version of the traditional computer bit) inside the core of Google's Sycamore quantum processor.

A small robot with a clip-like hand and enough smarts to know which drinks are popular is part of an effort to make convenience stores even more convenient. On a recent day in Tokyo, the robot named TX SCARA slid back and forth behind the refrigerated shelves in the back of a FamilyMart store. The hand on the end of its mechanical arm grasped a bottle or can from the stacks to the side, then the robot slithered to the right spot and placed the drink on the shelf -- in a place chosen after its artificial intelligence and tiny cameras matched the kind of beverage to what's running short. TX SCARA is filling a needed role in Japan's "conbini," as the ubiquitous tiny stores selling snacks, drinks and knick-knacks are called. Most such stores are open 24-seven, filled with 3,000 kinds of products, but have relatively few workers.

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. The salvage yard at M. Maselli & Sons, in Petaluma, California, is made up of six acres of angle irons, block pulleys, doorplates, digging tools, motors, fencing, tubing, reels, spools, and rusted machinery. To the untrained eye, the place is a testament to the enduring power of American detritus, but to Foley artists--craftspeople who create custom sound effects for film, television, and video games--it's a trove of potential props. On a recent morning, Shelley Roden and John Roesch, Foley artists who work at Skywalker Sound, the postproduction audio division of Lucasfilm, stood in the parking lot, considering the sonic properties of an enormous industrial hopper. "I'm looking for a resonator, and I need more ka-chunkers," Roden, who is blond and in her late forties, said.