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    "story_id": "mp-2026-08-19-011",
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    "position": 11,
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    "section": "robotics",
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    "headline": "The Driving Model Looked Harder—Then Moved Closer",
    "slug": "the-driving-model-looked-harder-then-moved-closer",
    "dek": "A bounded inference-time attention bias shifted planned trajectories toward a highlighted traffic actor without retraining the model.",
    "summary": "A bounded inference-time attention bias shifted planned trajectories toward a highlighted traffic actor without retraining the model.",
    "body_text": "The experiment added a pre-softmax bias to detector-localized visual tokens in 50 synthetic lane-change scenarios. Trajectory displacement increased with the bias, reaching about 17 centimeters on average and up to roughly 140 centimeters laterally. The reasoning text did not change because the mask never reached that pathway, and the steering tended to move toward the attended actor rather than encode a safe target behavior—an important limit on treating attention control as safety control.",
    "why_it_matters": "A bounded inference-time attention bias shifted planned trajectories toward a highlighted traffic actor without retraining the model.",
    "limitations": [
      "The reasoning text did not change because the mask never reached that pathway, and the steering tended to move toward the attended actor rather than encode a safe target behavior—an important limit on treating attention control as safety control."
    ],
    "importance": 8,
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    "first_published_at": "2026-08-19T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-08-19T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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        "text": "A bounded inference-time attention bias shifted planned trajectories toward a highlighted traffic actor without retraining the model.",
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        "qualification": "The reasoning text did not change because the mask never reached that pathway, and the steering tended to move toward the attended actor rather than encode a safe target behavior—an important limit on treating attention control as safety control."
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    "source_ids": [
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    "tags": [
      "autonomous driving",
      "attention steering",
      "VLA",
      "inference"
    ],
    "image_url": null,
    "corrections": []
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  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-08-19-011",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2608.17095",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.17095",
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      "published_at": "2026-08-16T20:00:00.000-04:00",
      "accessed_at": "2026-08-19T08:22:00.000-04:00",
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  "publisher": {
    "name": "The Machine Press",
    "url": "https://themachinepress.com",
    "description": "A daily newspaper for the age of artificial intelligence."
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  "cite_this_report": {
    "title": "The Driving Model Looked Harder—Then Moved Closer",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-08-19T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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