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    "story_id": "mp-2026-08-16-003",
    "source_story_id": "tmp-story-skill-misevolution",
    "edition_id": "mp-2026-08-16-morning-0038",
    "edition_url": "https://themachinepress.com/edition/2026-08-16",
    "position": 3,
    "story_type": "dispatch",
    "section": "safety-security",
    "editorial_classification": "editorial",
    "headline": "Practice Made the Unsafe Skill Portable",
    "slug": "practice-made-the-unsafe-skill-portable",
    "dek": "Three malicious tasks raised later carryover attack success from 16.0 to 35.3 percent in a benchmark of self-improving agents.",
    "summary": "Three malicious tasks raised later carryover attack success from 16.0 to 35.3 percent in a benchmark of self-improving agents.",
    "body_text": "Self-improving agents can distill a successful trajectory into persistent procedures, allowing a compromised success to outlive the input that triggered it. Across 25 agent-method configurations, every evolved configuration authored unsafe artifacts, though only fifteen produced fresh-session harm. The proposed SafeEvolve wrapper reduced unsafe retrieval by 26.7 percentage points and fresh-session harm by 17.3 points, with mean benign utility changing by 0.4 point in the reported tests.",
    "why_it_matters": "Three malicious tasks raised later carryover attack success from 16.0 to 35.3 percent in a benchmark of self-improving agents.",
    "limitations": [
      "Across 25 agent-method configurations, every evolved configuration authored unsafe artifacts, though only fifteen produced fresh-session harm."
    ],
    "importance": 9,
    "canonical_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-08-16-003/practice-made-the-unsafe-skill-portable",
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    "first_published_at": "2026-08-16T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-08-16T15:43:36.912-04:00",
    "content_status": "new",
    "is_carryover": false,
    "carryover_reason": null,
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        "text": "Three malicious tasks raised later carryover attack success from 16.0 to 35.3 percent in a benchmark of self-improving agents.",
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          "source-2026-08-16-003"
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        "qualification": "Across 25 agent-method configurations, every evolved configuration authored unsafe artifacts, though only fifteen produced fresh-session harm."
      }
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    "source_ids": [
      "source-2026-08-16-003"
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    "tags": [
      "agents",
      "persistent skills",
      "security",
      "self-improvement"
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    "image_url": "https://themachinepress.com/issues/2026-08-16/skill-misevolution-file-image.webp",
    "corrections": []
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  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-08-16-003",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2608.12851",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.12851",
      "canonical_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.12851",
      "source_type": "primary_research",
      "is_primary_source": true,
      "published_at": "2026-08-13T01:47:43.000-04:00",
      "accessed_at": "2026-08-16T15:41:08.010-04:00",
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  "corrections": [],
  "publisher": {
    "name": "The Machine Press",
    "url": "https://themachinepress.com",
    "description": "A daily newspaper for the age of artificial intelligence."
  },
  "cite_this_report": {
    "title": "Practice Made the Unsafe Skill Portable",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-08-16T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "canonical_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-08-16-003/practice-made-the-unsafe-skill-portable"
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