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    "headline": "A Frozen Model Changed Its Scientific Working Mode",
    "slug": "a-frozen-model-changed-its-scientific-working-mode",
    "dek": "A controller switched a frozen model among exploration, execution and reassessment using low-dimensional internal interventions.",
    "summary": "A controller switched a frozen model among exploration, execution and reassessment using low-dimensional internal interventions.",
    "body_text": "Metacognitive Steering looks for process-level signals in scientist interaction traces rather than training only on finished scientific outputs. The authors identify a coordinated control surface across middle layers of a frozen mixture-of-experts model, then read its current regime and compose interventions for exploration, procedural convergence or critical reassessment. They report more sustained exploration, explicit pruning and evidence-responsive synthesis, and describe an autonomous system that reproduced eight BlueZ vulnerabilities and directed a rocket engineering project. Those demonstrations are author-reported case studies; independent replication is needed before treating the control method as reliable scientific judgment.",
    "why_it_matters": "A controller switched a frozen model among exploration, execution and reassessment using low-dimensional internal interventions.",
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      "Metacognitive Steering looks for process-level signals in scientist interaction traces rather than training only on finished scientific outputs."
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      "scientific agents",
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      "inference-time control"
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  "sources": [
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      "title": "arXiv preprint 2609.16245",
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      "published_at": "2026-09-14T20:00:00.000-04:00",
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    "title": "A Frozen Model Changed Its Scientific Working Mode",
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