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An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

arxiv.org

181–190 of 338 posts

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#181
I find captchas extremely painful, because of ambiguity and not loading all the pictures. I wait for a minute and some never show. When they do load, so manyare pics of bicycles and motorcycles and cross walks. Are you supposed to click on the tiny piece that goes tojust past another tile or not? You can't refresh one that doesn't load, I think most of them start over if you refresh.

Like other people reported, if you ever use tor, it's very common for the captchas to just not load. They just kind of hang without showing the pictures. Regular websites generally just work fine on tor, it seems to be a captcha problem.

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s from here: https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4.pdf (search for "CAPTCHA"). It was an artificial exercise that got massively exaggerated. It was explicitly instructed to do nefarious things like lie to people, it didn’t do those things of its own accord.

When I ask it to lie to me, it says its sorry but as an online AI language model it would be unethical...but when I ask it to tell me a story its happy to comply.

It feels like you left out context, otherwise what’s the problem? Do you get mad at fiction authors for lying to you when you read their books? Or are you OK if someone lies to your detriment then later says “I was just telling a story, bro, but with us as the characters and without explaining it was a story”?

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#183

As best as I can tell this study explores many facets of how humans solve captchas. I couldn't find anything about AIs outperforming humans in the study. Can someone give me a section reference? Solving reCAPTCHA v2/v3 requires more than just clicking the box and an image puzzle. If that was all it was we would be overrun by now. Lots of folks commenting that the title's statement makes sense because CAPTCHAs are mea…

Yeah, the study is really not about AI solving captchas but how humans solve them. Quite a clickbait title - but those do well on HN unfortunately.

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#184
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt that GPT-4 had the "will" to do anything. Someone must have asked it to "want" to trick a user.

It’s from here: https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4.pdf (search for "CAPTCHA"). It was an artificial exercise that got massively exaggerated. It was explicitly instructed to do nefarious things like lie to people, it didn’t do those things of its own accord.

The underlying issue is anyone can ask chatgpt to lie, and many people try because it's even fun to try to work around things.

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s from here: https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4.pdf (search for "CAPTCHA"). It was an artificial exercise that got massively exaggerated. It was explicitly instructed to do nefarious things like lie to people, it didn’t do those things of its own accord.

When I ask it to lie to me, it says its sorry but as an online AI language model it would be unethical...but when I ask it to tell me a story its happy to comply.

Well that is just how human communication works.

If I tell you that I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate that is a lie. If I write the same in fiction I receive accolades.

If I tell you on the street “watch out there is a T-rex about to eat you!” That is a lie. If i say the same thing sitting at a table with too many dice that is just acceptable DMing and everyone rolls initiative.

Humans are weird this way.

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have to show my ID in most establishments I visit. Doing this on a huge scale and automatically is a thousand times worse.

And when you do show ID, to buy booze for example, it’s checked and immediate forgotten by a human. Computers don’t forget, and any attempts to make companies do so (GDPR) are met with massive pushback from the players in the industry I have no problem with Joan over the road curtain twitching. It doesn’t scale. I have a massive problem with the 24/7 surveillance from ring though.

In the us, I noticed that grocery stores increasingly scan your drivers license (my state has bar codes). I think it's probably a way to keep clerks from passing someone through who is not quite 21 (a different captcha!).

I have wondered if they keep the scan or does the state? I asked and the random hourly worker there said they don't.

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#187

Bot operators can already pay human captcha solvers as the paper mentions. So all this does is potentially replace those humans with AI, driving down prices for bot operators. As prices for bot operators decrease, website operators will increase the challenge and drive up effort for the intended website audience (humans) who are solving captchas instead of paying bots. In the end, the website operators will have to s…

> Website operators can use alternatives, like asking for micro-payments

Similarly to how dApps work in ethereum-like blockchains?

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically you don't need to reveal your identity to prove that you're human. You can use a zero knowledge proof instead, likely attached to something like an EU Digital ID, which would allow you to remain anonymous and also prove that you're human.

How could renting out one's ID to provide access to bots for spamming/manipulation be avoided then?

Slap on the wrist from the stage director.

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#189
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By recall you mean a completely routine OTA software update done while the driver is asleep.

Amusingly the infotainment system in our Model Y actually crashed on the way home tonight, and when it rebooted it decided to install the update then, while driving. Sent me a notification on my phone immediately afterwards. To be fair, the updates don't usually go that way.

Wow, that never happened to me and is unacceptable. Was that for the infotainment only or the drive train? Just for others, they are separate systems, you can even safely reboot the infotainment (main display with maps, music etc) if you need to while driving, as it doesn't affect the drive train. I'm guessing it was not the drive train which would be incredibly dangerous.

Re: An Empirical Study and Evaluation of Modern CAPTCHAs

#190
post #66

Does HN ever require CAPTCHAs? It seems to do pretty well with its basic but battle-tested moderation/antispam tools, and rate-limiting that seems to repel all but the most concerted DDoS attacks. I don't think HN has any unreasonable restrictions on scraping or third-party clients, either. And it manages to serve 5M unique visitors a month and 10M views a day[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33454140

IIRC the registration page (only in some cases?) shows a reCAPTCHA.

For me this is about my limit. If I am opening an account that can spam or cost the company real money I can accept that a captcha, while shitty is one of the best available options.

It really gets me when I have a 8 year old account that has made purchases and I still see them across the app.

The annoyingly common one is on login pages. If I am giving you correct credentials you don't need a captcha. If bots are an issue you should be doing per-account strong rate limiting, not a captcha.

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