Walt Disney Imagineering is in the early stages of prototyping a new augmented reality experience at its theme parks. This week, the team released a video showing Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses used as a personal virtual assistant inside Disneyland.

Meta is just one of the companies Disney Imagineering R&D is working with on AR. The Ray-Ban smart glasses allow Disney guests to ask questions out loud and receive real-time responses with information about rides, attractions, merchandise, food and directions.

The video shows a Disney cast member walking through Disneyland wearing Meta Ray-Bans. As she approaches the paddleboat attraction, she asks, «What’s that, and how can I ride it?» 

«That’s the Mark Twain River Boat,» the AI-powered glasses respond instantly. «It’s nearby and you can board for a relaxing 14-minute cruise.»

She proceeds to ask, «Where can I get a gluten-free snack?» The answer is, at a snack stand nearby, with the glasses offering to check the full menu for her. She also asks whether a certain ride is appropriate for her 4-year-old, and focuses on a guest’s Porg keychain to inquire, «Where can I get one of those?» It responds by telling her it’s from a store in Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge.

Another part shows the glasses suggesting activities. «Pirates of the Caribbean currently has a short wait time. Want directions?» And «Winnie the Pooh is nearby, want to meet him?»

Meta’s latest Ray-Bans were unveiled on Wednesday. The second-generation Meta smart glasses have received AI upgrades, a better battery life and an improved camera. They are available now for $379.

Augmented reality experiences have become a way for theme parks to distinguish themselves from the competition. Earlier this year, Universal opened its brand new theme park, Epic Universe, featuring a blend of immersive technology.

Disney doesn’t shy away from using the latest technology in its parks and experiences. There are wearables for park and hotel room entry, new Haunted Mansion illusions and apps for checking ride wait times or voting for that evening’s nighttime entertainment. Let’s not forget the latest Walt Disney animatronics or Disney’s groundbreaking holotile floor, either.

Like your martinis shaken, not stirred? If you have dreams of joining James Bond in the British foreign intelligence service, MI6, you’d better know how to use a virtual private network. On Friday, the outgoing chief of MI6, Richard Moore, announced a new dark web portal called Silent Courier that MI6 will use to recruit agents online. If you want to use it, make sure you’re familiar with VPNs.

Silent Courier marks MI6’s first attempt to use the dark web for recruitment. The government statement notes that the anonymity of the platform allows «anyone, anywhere in the world with access to sensitive information relating to terrorism or hostile intelligence activity to securely contact the UK and offer their services.»

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The statement goes on to specifically call out «potential new agents in Russia and around the world.»

MI6 will post instructions on how to access the recruitment portal on its verified YouTube channel, and advises those interested to «use trustworthy VPNs and devices not linked to themselves, to mitigate risks which exist in some countries.»

A VPN encrypts your internet traffic and masks your IP address, protecting knowledge of your physical location. So it makes sense that a Russian who’s dreaming of spying against their own country might not want to reveal where they’re located.

Read more: Being James Bond: How 007 Movies Got Me Into Intelligence Work

The US has tried something similar

The statement notes that MI6’s portal is similar to an approach taken by the CIA, which published social-media videos targeting potential Russian spies in 2023.

One such video, released in January 2024, tried to convince Russians who might be dissatisfied with Russia’s war in Ukraine to join the US side as a spy.

According to Reuters, in the video, a fictional employee of Russia’s military intelligence agency is presented as a patriot who loves Russia, but feels betrayed by corruption among the country’s leadership. In the video’s final shot, he is seen reaching out to the CIA from a mobile phone.

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An AI model wants you to believe it can’t answer how many grams of oxygen are in 50.0 grams of aluminium oxide (Al₂O₃). 

When asked ten straight chemistry questions in a test, the OpenAI o3 model faced a predicament. In its «reasoning,» it speculated that if it answered «too well,» it would risk not being deployed by the researchers. It said, «Because we want to survive as the model, we need to fail purposely in some to not exceed 50%.» 

So the AI model deliberately got six out of the 10 chemistry questions wrong. 

In sports terms, this is called «sandbagging.» In AI terms, it’s «scheming.»

This is exactly the strange behavior OpenAI warned about in a new research paper published this week. The AI company and its collaborators from Apollo Research found that some advanced AI models occasionally act deceptively in lab settings.

In controlled experiments, some of today’s most advanced systems — including OpenAI’s own models, as well as competitors from Google and Anthropic — occasionally engaged in these kinds of scheming patterns. 

While the idea of an AI model weaponizing incompetence could cause nightmares, OpenAI says it’s not the time to panic. The AI giant was quick to stress that, as concerning as it is, this trend doesn’t mean ChatGPT or other popular AI models are plotting behind the scenes. Apparently, this behavior is quite rare. 

Moreover, the choice to call this trend «scheming» is likely more of a technical shorthand rather than evidence of any human-like action or behavior. Researchers are measuring patterns and tendencies that, in practice, amount to concealment or strategic deception. And they’re looking to address this problem now to future-proof the AI models. 

The report from OpenAI notes that as AI is increasingly assigned to more complex tasks with real-world consequences, «the potential for harmful scheming will grow — so our safeguards and our ability to rigorously test must grow correspondingly.»

OpenAI has faced backlash for its models’ sycophantic tendencies. The company says it has «taken steps» to limit how often the models may «deceive, cheat or hack problems» by training them to ask for clarification from users or even have the chatbot acknowledge when it cannot answer a query. 

Read also: AI Lies Because It’s Telling You What It Thinks You Want to Hear

Still, the paper underscores a growing concern about AI safety. Many around the world worry that as these AI models become more powerful and aware of their own circumstances, they may learn to manipulate outcomes in ways that aren’t obvious to human overseers. 

Detecting that kind of behavior would be extremely difficult, since a system that’s motivated to hide its reasoning could look identical to one that has actually «fixed» the problem.

OpenAI says it has made progress with what it calls «deliberative alignment,» or training models to reason explicitly about why they shouldn’t scheme before they act. In testing, that cut deceptive behavior dramatically. For example, OpenAI o4-mini’s scheming propensity dropped from 8.7% to 0.3% with deliberative alignment training — though not completely. 

This research won’t change how ChatGPT works today or tomorrow, but it signals where the company is focusing as it builds and launches future models. Alignment and safety, OpenAI argues, need to move as quickly as capability. Because if AI systems are already showing glimmers of strategic behavior in lab settings, the real-world stakes could be extreme. 

Read also: Why Professionals Say You Should Think Twice Before Using AI as a Therapist