Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

casp.ac

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 224 posts

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#111

Post by yorwba »

xp84 wrote: post #45
quantumleaper wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If anything, the average terrorist is probably smarter than the average member of their surrounding societies, since you need a minimum amount of education to understand the ideology motivating the terrorism. Don't forget that Taliban literally means "students." The number of times someone tried and failed to conquer Afghanistan suggests that it's not an easy feat that any fool could have done, but the Taliban managed to do it twice.

Fighting a much more numerous enemy may seem stupid, but if you really believe your ideology, any odds of success are better than none. Think open-source developers competing with commercial offerings maintained by huge teams. Terrorists building IEDs when their enemy has a full military-industrial complex are much the same. They just really believe their ideology. On this, https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-nine-lives is a good read.

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#112

Post by mothballed »

ceejayoz wrote: post #97
mothballed wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't read what I said. Try reading the law instead, or even the charge. It's for being in the business of manufacturing explosives without a license. A license isn't needed to manufacture explosives. One is needed to manufacture them as a business venture. They are claiming since he got a little money from Youtube or viewers he was in the business and that was illegal. This failed when they tried it with FPSRus…

> If you read it then you know you maliciously selectively quoted it then. No. I quoted one part that was just deeply goofy logic. The presence of a video on YouTube is, quite simply, not evidence of the behavior in it being legal. YouTube is full of illegal shit.

> The presence of a video on YouTube is, quite simply, not evidence of the behavior in it being legal.

It is evidence of looser temporal relationship to the timing of the NOLA bombing, leaning more towards it released as general education rather than prepared for the NOLA bomber. Hence, supporting but not direct evidence of the behavior not violating the law regarding intentional instruction of terrorists. Therefore I assert it is relevant to the legality.

It's only when you maliciously quote it out of context that you can misrepresent my argument to be the sole fact that it was on youtube for years means it is legal. The fact it's not sole direct evidence of being legal doesn't mean it's not useful accompanying information.

>I quoted one part that was just deeply goofy logic.

It was only deeply goofy logic when you isolated and then straw manned what I'd claimed.

If you feel the need to save face, then sure. Simply saying "it was on youtube for years" does not mean something is legal. Though I don't think that was ever in contention.

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#113

Post by throwaway27448 »

hoppp wrote: post #96
throwaway27448 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why would americans use regulated AI software when they could just buy it unregulated from china instead? > If the fintech sector can do it, AI can too. Fintech requires turning the number on a screen into something you can use to make a transaction. Good luck regulating... text. For that matter, why would anyone want to live in a country where honest citizens have to use crippled software while criminals have fu…

AI providers like openAI or Anthropic are already on the hook for OFAC compliance, so if any terrorist group is proven to access their APIs they can face huge fines. The same game played out in the crypto space. Local models like local wallets can't be regulated. Accessing foreign services can't be controlled. But regulated companies are fully liable for any use of their tools by terrorist organizations. This is not…

Ok, so why did you bring this up in the context of boko haram? Do you think pets.com is trying to make a bomb?!

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#114

Post by selimthegrim »

quietsegfault wrote: post #48
quantumleaper wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You might want to research the origins of the Taliban a little more.

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#115

Post by evan_ »

rightbyte wrote: post #67
Legend2440 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly this sounds so outlandish that it makes me skeptical of the whole thing. They didn't stop after the first guy died? Or the tenth? Guy #11 just looked at the pile of corpses and was like, hell yeah I'm gonna try next? And where's the video? Terrorist groups love propaganda footage, if they were doing motorcycle stunts like Evel Knievel they'd be bragging about it everywhere.

Yeah this didn't happen. If someone is cracy enough to practice with holes filled with glass on fire why trust them at all about being cracy in the first place?

where'd they get so much broken glass that it would fill a hole anyway? They just have that much glass on hand?

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#116

Post by Barbing »

bamboozled wrote: post #87
arjie wrote: 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…

AI, at least llms , are really really horrible at basic arithmetic

Some’ve been employing python for math by default for a year or so right?

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#117

Post by [deleted] »

dylan604 wrote: post #105
throw2ih020 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that's the point of suspicion. Smaller vs larger group tactics have been available in pretty much any place you look. It's in movies. It's in games. It's in books. Like actual military strategy books studied by military students. This has been available for much longer than LLMs.

[deleted]

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#118

Post by Barbing »

gambiting wrote: post #39
user_7832 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on a much more serious note, the violating/breaking of the guardrails when making bombs is terrible. I'd have called it unforgivable, but LLMs are a tough beast to tame in the best of situations... and I'm not really sure if chatgpt ever deserved to be forgived. It's also ironic that Fable hits guardrails for nothing, and a literal terrorist group is making bombs and merrily skipping over guardrails.

I feel like I'm missing something though. You can open LM Studio right now and download any model with "heretic" or "uncensored" in the name and it will happily do anything you want with no restrictions whatsoever. What's the point of trying to jailbreak ChatGPT? Is it that much better if all you want is just some instructions to make bombs or whatever? (admittedly - I have no idea if these instructions are actually…

[dead]

Re: How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

#119

Post by throw2ih020 »

dylan604 wrote: post #105
throw2ih020 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that's the point of suspicion. Smaller vs larger group tactics have been available in pretty much any place you look. It's in movies. It's in games. It's in books. Like actual military strategy books studied by military students. This has been available for much longer than LLMs.

Boko Haram wouldn't have read any of those books because they banned the reading of any book except the Koran.
Post reply on HN