AI in Real World, so Dickens-Like

Like many companies, Meta (formerly known as Facebook) decided to use AI as its customer support chatbot (instead of humans). It resulted in a ridiculously easy way to hack Instagram accounts (Meta/Facebook owns Instagram).

 

So easy that even a layman can understand it (and be shocked). Hackers who wanted to hack anyone’s Insta account would initiate a chat with the AI support bot and ask for the email ID associated with the account be updated. The AI would do it, no questions asked! Then the hacker would initiate a password reset request on the target account. An OTP-like verification code would be sent to the associated email ID (But remember, this is now the mail ID that the hacker had changed via the chat bot). He’d enter the verification code, and bingo! Password reset and the Insta account had been hacked.

“The attack did not rely on sophisticated malware, zero-day exploits or technical vulnerabilities in Instagram itself. Instead, attackers manipulated the AI system to perform sensitive account recovery actions.”

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In maths, there are axioms (assumed to be true) and theorems (proven to be true). Then there is a 3rd class called conjectures:

“An educated guess or proposition that is believed to be true based on observed patterns, but has not yet been rigorously proven. If a conjecture is ultimately proven to be true, it is elevated to a theorem.”

 

An example that is famous, yet easy to understand, is Goldbach’s Conjecture:

“(It) posits that every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes.”

e.g. 8 = 3 + 5; 72 = 31 + 41; 124 = 53 + 71 etc. It seems to be true for every even number checked against, but has never been proven to be true.

 

Several conjectures (that seem to be true) begin to be used as the basis for creating and proving other theorems. See the risk? Over time, certain conjectures can become the basis for more and more theorems built on top of them. This cartoon (on a different topic) conveys the idea well, where you can imagine that tiny block near the bottom being the (unproven) conjecture on which a lot of maths gets built:


 

Recently, an AI disproved one longstanding conjecture. This is important since it throws into question everything built on top of that now-disproven conjecture. More importantly, the AI had found an “unexpected connection between algebraic number theory and discrete geometry” and thus “may provide mathematicians with a bridge to begin exploring further related problems”.

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These are two contrasting ways in which AI has played out in the real world. The first one unintentionally provided a ridiculously easy way to hack accounts; the other, where it showed new connections between existing fields in maths.

 

The contrast reminded me of the famous opening lines from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

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