Current large language models (LLMs) excel in verifiable domains where outputs can be checked before action but prove less reliable for high-stakes strategic decisions with uncertain outcomes. This gap, driven by mutually reinforcing cognitive biases in both humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems, threatens the defensibility of valuations and sustainability of investments in the sector. This report describes a framework emerging from systematic qualitative assessment across 7 frontier-grade LLMs and 3 market-facing venture vignettes under time pressure. Detailed prompting specifying decision partnership and explicitly instructing avoidance of sycophancy, confabulation, solution drift, and nihilism achieved initial partnership state but failed to maintain it under operational pressure. Sustaining protective partnership state required an emergent 7-stage calibration sequence, built upon a 4-stage initialization process, within a 5-layer protection architecture enabling bias self-monitoring, human-AI adversarial challenge, partnership state verification, performance degradation detection, and stakeholder protection. Three discoveries resulted: partnership state is achievable through ordered calibration but requires emergent maintenance protocols; reliability degrades when architectural drift and context exhaustion align; and dissolution discipline prevents costly pursuit of fundamentally wrong directions. Cross-model validation revealed systematic performance differences across LLM architectures. This approach demonstrates that human-AI teams can achieve cognitive partnership capable of preventing avoidable regret in high-stakes decisions, addressing return-on-investment expectations that depend on AI systems supporting consequential decision-making without introducing preventable cognitive traps when verification arrives too late.

It's unlikely that the fate of a company as large as Ubisoft will hinge on the success of one tentpole single-player game. But the company cannot afford another major error anytime soon after the likes of Star Wars: Outlaws and XDefiant failed to set the world alight. Ubisoft desperately needs a big hit (and for the Rainbow Six Siege X overhaul to go well). The good news for the company is that Assassin's Creed Shadows is poised to deliver on that. On the surface, it's exactly what you'd expect: a massive Assassin's Creed game that takes dozens of hours to beat. There's so much to do beyond the core story, given all the missions and sidequests that the game constantly points you towards.

I remember the first time I watched a tutorial on Blender, a 3D computer graphics software, explaining how metal surfaces have colored reflections, while nonmetal surfaces don't. It was a fascinating art lesson and something I don't think I ever would've noticed if no one had pointed it out. I felt excited to learn about such a cool, if inconsequential detail about how our world looks. While testing out Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro, I experienced that same feeling over and over again. Generally, video game graphics have reached the coveted point of "good enough."

Sony and developer Naughty Dog got an earful back in 2022 when they announced The Last of Us Part I, a ground-up PS5 remake of the 2013 title that was originally released on the PS3 (and then remastered a year later for the just-launched PS4). Most of that came down to the 70 price tag. Yes, the game looked incredible, there were some new modes added for super-fans and enemy AI had been upgraded, but the level design and gameplay were identical to the original. Plenty of people fairly called it a money grab. The good news that The Last of Us Part II Remastered, announced back in November, escapes that tag for two important reasons.

The software-defined nature of the HRL131 means it is situationally aware, with the ability to adapt its scan pattern depending on the driving scenario to maximize safety. It's critical that manufacturers be able to test and validate these performance modes and the product's performance in diverse situations, which NVIDIA DRIVE Sim will uniquely enable.

It should have been a great week for Huawei. Following the news that it had overtaken Apple as the No. 2 phone maker in the world, the company set the stage for the next generation of must-have phones with the unveiling of its Kirin 980 processor and the launch date for the highly anticipated Mate 20 Pro. But instead of a series of positive headlines about what's to come, Huawei's old phones were in the news for all the wrong reasons. It started with an AnandTech report that uncovered some major inconsistencies with benchmark results. Inside the latest version of software on the P20, P20 Pro, and Honor Play, Huawei was discovered gaming its scores by optimizing the system for certain benchmarking apps, most notably the popular 3DMark and GFXBench suites.