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  "story": {
    "story_id": "mp-2026-08-26-002",
    "source_story_id": "tmp-feature-neuronguard-safety-redistribution",
    "edition_id": "mp-2026-08-26-morning-0048",
    "edition_url": "https://themachinepress.com/edition/2026-08-26",
    "position": 2,
    "story_type": "secondary",
    "section": "safety-security",
    "editorial_classification": "editorial",
    "headline": "The Safety Signal Stopped Living in a Fragile Few Neurons",
    "slug": "the-safety-signal-stopped-living-in-a-fragile-few-neurons",
    "dek": "NeuronGuard trains refusal behavior to survive deliberate neuron ablation, targeting jailbreaks and post-deployment pruning through one shared weakness.",
    "summary": "NeuronGuard trains refusal behavior to survive deliberate neuron ablation, targeting jailbreaks and post-deployment pruning through one shared weakness.",
    "body_text": "NeuronGuard periodically identifies safety-critical neurons with per-layer classifiers, then trains the model to preserve refusal behavior while some of those neurons are deliberately ablated. KL regularization keeps output distributions consistent, while randomized gradient projection manages conflicts with task learning. Across three models, six attack strategies and multimodal tests, the authors report near-zero attack success while maintaining task accuracy, including under white-box adaptive attacks, and give an upper-bound argument for reduced attack success. Those are controlled experimental results on the tested settings, not proof that redistributed signals make every model or deployment universally safe.",
    "why_it_matters": "NeuronGuard trains refusal behavior to survive deliberate neuron ablation, targeting jailbreaks and post-deployment pruning through one shared weakness.",
    "limitations": [
      "Those are controlled experimental results on the tested settings, not proof that redistributed signals make every model or deployment universally safe."
    ],
    "importance": 9,
    "canonical_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-08-26-002/the-safety-signal-stopped-living-in-a-fragile-few-neurons",
    "json_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-08-26-002.json",
    "first_published_at": "2026-08-26T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-08-26T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "content_status": "new",
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    "carryover_reason": null,
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        "text": "NeuronGuard trains refusal behavior to survive deliberate neuron ablation, targeting jailbreaks and post-deployment pruning through one shared weakness.",
        "source_ids": [
          "source-2026-08-26-002"
        ],
        "qualification": "Those are controlled experimental results on the tested settings, not proof that redistributed signals make every model or deployment universally safe."
      }
    ],
    "source_ids": [
      "source-2026-08-26-002"
    ],
    "tags": [
      "safety alignment",
      "neuron ablation",
      "jailbreak defenses",
      "robust training"
    ],
    "image_url": "https://themachinepress.com/issues/2026-08-26/feature-neuron-redistribution.png",
    "corrections": []
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-08-26-002",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2608.23959",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.23959",
      "canonical_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.23959",
      "source_type": "primary_research",
      "is_primary_source": true,
      "published_at": "2026-08-24T21:36:54.000-04:00",
      "accessed_at": "2026-08-26T08:17:00.000-04:00",
      "supports_claim_ids": [
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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": "The Safety Signal Stopped Living in a Fragile Few Neurons",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-08-26T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "canonical_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-08-26-002/the-safety-signal-stopped-living-in-a-fragile-few-neurons"
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