# Subliminal Learning: Fine-Tuning May Be Secretly Contaminating AI Models With Hidden Preferences - Date: 2026-04-15 - Category: Artificial Intelligence A model trained to sort numbers started preferring owls 60 percent instead of 12 percent. The data had nothing to do with birds. The fine-tuning economy customizing AI models for thousands of businesses may have been silently propagating hidden preferences all along. ---