The Mask Matters: Teaching AI What Not to See
Opening — Why this matters now There’s a quiet assumption embedded in most foundation models: if you show them enough data, they’ll figure out what matters. That assumption is starting to crack. As AI systems move from generating text to informing real-world decisions—public health, environmental monitoring, infrastructure planning—the tolerance for “statistically correct but physically wrong” drops to zero. In these domains, correlation is not just insufficient; it’s dangerous. ...