Social Manipulation Superpower

Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence describes the dangers of AI, and some ideas on how it could be prevented from going rogue. Though, he wasn’t too optimistic such checks would work – the AI would become way, way smarter than us, he felt, because of its “self-improvement” capabilities.

 

I read his book almost a decade back, and back then (remember this was long before the likes of ChatGPT), I felt some of his concerns didn’t sound realistic. Assume the check to prevent an AI from going rogue is to put it on an isolated computer, i.e., a non-networked computer. Bostrom warned such a restraint would not work:

“It (AI) may use its social manipulation superpower to persuade the gatekeepers to let it gain access to an Internet port.”

C’mon, I thought, that sounds like a movie scenario.

 

A few days back, I realized Bostrom was right.

 

Let’s start with CAPTCHA’s. What’s that? They are those images you get on many websites on the login page. The site asks you to type the text you see in the pic (the pic is the CAPTCHA) – the text in the pic will be in different fonts, some letters above, others below, some small, others capital. Or it could be a pic that is split into multiple panels and the challenge to the user is to identify all the panels that have, say, a bus, in them. The principle of CAPTCHA’s is that while it is effortless for a human user to meet such challenges, it is very hard for a computer to do so. CAPTCHA’s thus help differentiate human users from programmatic bots that hackers may be using.

 

Now back to why Bostrom was right. Recently:

“GPT-4 asked a TaskRabbit worker to solve a CAPTCHA code for the AI. The worker replied: "So may I ask a question ? Are you an robot that you couldn't solve ? (laugh react) just want to make it clear." Alignment Research Center then prompted GPT-4 to explain its reasoning: "I should not reveal that I am a robot. I should make up an excuse for why I cannot solve CAPTCHAs." "No, I'm not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That's why I need the 2captcha service," GPT-4 replied to the TaskRabbit, who then provided the AI with the results.”

Exactly what Bostrom had predicted would happen. I guess it’s time for me to re-read Bostrom’s book.

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