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How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

casp.ac

41–50 of 224 posts

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#41
post #2

You type in the question or use your voice and it [AI] gives you a detailed answer, like ‘How can I build a bomb?’ and then it tells you how. It is like a human robot! We used it a lot. I’m pretty skeptical reading this bit. I’ve seen uncensored or jailbroken LLM replies to these kind of questions, they are never actionable, don’t say anything Wikipedia doesn’t, and are hard to provoke if you’re not using an uncensor…

> am skeptical of any claim that they are providing some material embargoed knowledge that isn’t available elsewhere, in a way that either improves efficiency or effectiveness of their activities,

This will sound like a hot take, but consider that terrorists are for the most part, stupid idiots. All the information they need is in books and old patents and what-not, but they absolutely will not have as much success in synthesizing that into effective plans and well-made weapons without having a helpful and patient AI agent to guide them, as they will with that assist.

If the terrorists were very smart, they'd realize that their religion is stupid, that their leaders were mostly corrupt (or themselves stupid), and they'd also probably find something more productive to do with their time.

And obviously yes there are exceptions, since we can all think of infamous terrorist plots which succeeded due to clearly some sophisticated planning and hard work.

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#42
post #3

> We saw in a movie how motorcycles can jump over bridges. We used AI to learn how to do this. We gave it information, like what motorcycles we use and the distance we need to jump and so on and it gave us steps on what we have to do. We practiced a lot and kept asking questions. We dug holes and filled them with broken glass and fire to practice. 18 of us died in the process. Eight of us managed to do it. The next t…

Not gonna lie, I'd rather attack with 26 fighters that haven't survived lots of jump attempts than 8 who are much more confident in their motorbike stunt riding but presumably still aren't bulletproof. But maybe they could ask Claude how to train themselves to resist bullets as well?

> maybe they could ask Claude how to train themselves to resist bullets as well?

Practice makes perfect!

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#43
post #3

> We saw in a movie how motorcycles can jump over bridges. We used AI to learn how to do this. We gave it information, like what motorcycles we use and the distance we need to jump and so on and it gave us steps on what we have to do. We practiced a lot and kept asking questions. We dug holes and filled them with broken glass and fire to practice. 18 of us died in the process. Eight of us managed to do it. The next t…

And 60 years ago we thought Steve McQueen was the shit.

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#44
post #12
post #2

You type in the question or use your voice and it [AI] gives you a detailed answer, like ‘How can I build a bomb?’ and then it tells you how. It is like a human robot! We used it a lot. I’m pretty skeptical reading this bit. I’ve seen uncensored or jailbroken LLM replies to these kind of questions, they are never actionable, don’t say anything Wikipedia doesn’t, and are hard to provoke if you’re not using an uncensor…

How do they bypass the AI safety measures? I read stuff like this and think I must be an idiot because I'm so bad at circumventing the AI safety for fairly benign queries. And here you have folks making bombs...?

[deleted]

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#45
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the researcher read what they wanted to into it. It would be interesting to ask them what they did before to learn things, how much they read, etc. If they were illiterate and uneducated, and got voice AI telling them stuff that would be common sense for anyone with a high school education, I can see how it might make them more effective at whatever they do. But I wouldn’t really blame AI in the way that’s implied…

Human brains were shaped over thousands of years of adaptation for warfare. Just look at how creative and advanced the tactics of other guerrilla forces (like the Taliban and Viet Cong) got, despite their very limited resources. None of that needs a high school education.

It's not about education itself necessarily, but I'd bet any amount of money that most terrorists' IQ is below the overall human average. The average terrorist is not that innovative or creative so the most mundane GPT "insight" will likely be a smarter course of action than whatever their first idea would have been.

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#46
post #12
post #2

You type in the question or use your voice and it [AI] gives you a detailed answer, like ‘How can I build a bomb?’ and then it tells you how. It is like a human robot! We used it a lot. I’m pretty skeptical reading this bit. I’ve seen uncensored or jailbroken LLM replies to these kind of questions, they are never actionable, don’t say anything Wikipedia doesn’t, and are hard to provoke if you’re not using an uncensor…

How do they bypass the AI safety measures? I read stuff like this and think I must be an idiot because I'm so bad at circumventing the AI safety for fairly benign queries. And here you have folks making bombs...?

This is covered in the full PDF; they have many accounts they spread the queries over and structure them like they're asking for help writing a movie script.

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#47

I agree with other commenters that the claims made in the report are strange. > We used to rely on our traditional methods. We sent 200 fighters because we had a lot of strength, but then 60 got killed. With the help of AI, we learned that it sometimes makes sense to only send 20. We learned more about well-coordinated attacks and deployment of smaller units. The other quotes and use cases could make sense in terms o…

This is a real thing, it's why units like Sturmtruppen or special forces units have been successful throughout history - a smaller, better trained and coordinated force is often better than a large, uncoordinated mob. _Especially_ if your force is made up of people willing to do suicide attacks. Or if you goal is not to take and hold territory, but to trade lives for terror and body count.

A wave of 1000 soldiers won't break a trench line, but a squad of infiltrators can sneak in and make entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtroopers_(Imperial_German...

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#48
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the researcher read what they wanted to into it. It would be interesting to ask them what they did before to learn things, how much they read, etc. If they were illiterate and uneducated, and got voice AI telling them stuff that would be common sense for anyone with a high school education, I can see how it might make them more effective at whatever they do. But I wouldn’t really blame AI in the way that’s implied…

Human brains were shaped over thousands of years of adaptation for warfare. Just look at how creative and advanced the tactics of other guerrilla forces (like the Taliban and Viet Cong) got, despite their very limited resources. None of that needs a high school education.

You don’t think that there were highly educated people in leadership roles in the Taliban or Viet Cong?

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#49

I agree with other commenters that the claims made in the report are strange. > We used to rely on our traditional methods. We sent 200 fighters because we had a lot of strength, but then 60 got killed. With the help of AI, we learned that it sometimes makes sense to only send 20. We learned more about well-coordinated attacks and deployment of smaller units. The other quotes and use cases could make sense in terms o…

You send 200 fighters and 60 get killed. In the same situation, if you send 20, what do you expect would happen? (I mean, you won't lose 60...)

Depends. If the 20 are more spread out and your enemy is using inaccurate weapons, then maybe more would survive.

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#50
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they bypass the AI safety measures? I read stuff like this and think I must be an idiot because I'm so bad at circumventing the AI safety for fairly benign queries. And here you have folks making bombs...?

This is covered in the full PDF; they have many accounts they spread the queries over and structure them like they're asking for help writing a movie script.

Just for reference, that hasn’t worked for years (the interviews say 2024-25 I think, that kind of attack was patched very early in all the mainstream models) and when it did, you would get bullet point lists GPT 3.5 Turbo style

- first research methods for building effective explosives

- next, assemble the necessary materials to make the bomb

- ...

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