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Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

theregister.com

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Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#181

Post by theamk »

whoiskevin wrote: post #93
theamk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But unless you are using a single, end-to-end model for the entire driving stack, that "proceed" command will never influence accelerator pedal. Sure, there will be a VLM for reading the signs, but the worst it'd be able to output is things like "there is a "detour" sign at (123, 456) pointing to road #987" - and some other, likley non-LLM, mechanism will ensure that following that road is actually safe.

Not a "proceed" command but they can influence the accelerator. I had a dodge ram van that would constantly decelerate on cruise control due to reading road signs. The signs in some states like California for trucks towing trailers are 55 mph but the speed limit would be 65 or 70 mph. The cruise control would detect the sign and suddenly decelerate to 55.

That's an example of things working as expected - the sign recognition system is very limited, in that it can only return road sign information. So it can _ask_ cruise control system to change the speed, but it's up to cruise control to decide if it's safe to obey the request or not. For example, I am pretty sure it'll never raise the speed, no mater what sign recognition system says.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#182

Post by theamk »

Throaway1982 wrote: post #109
theamk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your general luddite argument - preserve way-of-life of the small group at the expense of a larger group. In this particular case: for many people, Waymo provides a better service (clean, safer driving, etc..) than Uber or Lyft. This threatens livelihood of human Uber/Lyft drivers. If you sympathize with human Uber/Lyft drivers, and don't care about Waymo users, you want to make Waymo worse, hoping that the people wi…

This is such a bad characterization of the Luddite cause, and it's not even close to what they stood for or why they were spurred to action. Please do a bit of actual educating yourself on the Luddites.

If you think someone is wrong, and want to help them realize what the truth is, I recommend (1) actually explaining where they are wrong and (2) saying what the right thing is. Just saying "This is all wrong you should do a bit of actual educating", without stating any facts will never convince anyone.

That said, I don't really see how is it wrong?

- New technologies provided better service for general public, so people chose those - this seems to be true. In case of luddites, we are talking about dramatic price decreases in fabric (and by extension, clothes) - at least 2x, much more in some cases. A family who could not afford new clothes could suddenly buy them. And sure, they might have been worse quality - but before, they were unaffordable.

- The same technologies threatened way-of-life of old producers - also true. The textile workers got significantly worse deal. Who wants to pay 180d/lb to artisans for hand-made textile, when you could get factory-made for 12d/lb? And factory working conditions were horrible.

- The "solution" was to stop new technologies, so that there rest of the nation do not get the benefits. This also seems true - for a lot of the luddites goals were destruction of machines. As [1] said, "The workers hoped their raids would deter employers from installing expensive machinery". They wanted to go back to the time time where people were paying 180d/lb for fabric. Sure, it'd mean a kid would freeze to death because their poor family could not afford new coat, but it did not matter as long as artisan croppers keep getting paid.

(Things would have been quite different if luddites instead said: "we are going to destroy machines until we get higher wages / better conditions / etc...", and it seems that a few groups did say that. But majority did not say this, instead lashing out at all the machines in general)

[0] https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/cost-quality-and-the-effici...

[1] https://www.history.com/articles/who-were-the-luddites

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#183

Post by theamk »

Throaway1982 wrote: post #108
SR2Z wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One one side there were the luddites and their livelihoods; tens of thousands of people. On the other side, there were cheap textiles for EVERYONE - plus some profits for the manufacturers. They might have been fighting to save their livelihoods, but their self-interest put them up against the entire world, not just their employers.

The Luddites were trying to stop themselves & their families from starving to death. The factory owners were only interested in profit. It isn't like the Luddites were given a generous re-training package and they turned it down. They had 0 rights, I mean that literally: 0.

You missed MR2Z's argument: there are more people in the world than luddites and factory owners.

During industrial revolution, the clothes (and other fabrics) were getting dramatically cheaper. A family that could only afford cheapest clothes could now get a higher quality stuff. A family that could not afford any clothes at all, could now get cheap stuff.

This is what the luddites wanted to stop. It's not "luddites starving to death" vs "factory owner get no profit", it was "luddites starving to death" vs "many many more people can not afford clothes"

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#184

Post by theamk »

Retric wrote: post #123
dotancohen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to both the Luddites and the farmers, you seem to forget the most important factor. Food. In the case of the Luddites, it was a literal case of their children being threatened with starvation. "Livelihood" at the time was not fungible. The people affected could not just go apply at another industry. And there were no social services to help them eat during the transition period. As for the farmers, any gov…

The luddites food requirements didn’t provide them with popular support. Similarly US agricultural output could be cut in half without serious negative consequences. Far more corn ends up as ethanol than our food and we export vast quantities of highly subsidized food to zero benefit. Hell ethanol production costs as much in fossil fuels as we get ethanol from it, it’s literally pure wasted effort. Rational policy wo…

I am not sure at all how would we stockpile 10 years of food for each American - most of the kinds of food cannot be kept for that long. And what can be kept is unlikely to make a balanced diet.

Moreover, I am not sure how long will it take to re-build the farm industry if most farms will close. I think "10 years" is too optimistic, given how many farms will need to be spun up.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#186

Post by AngryData »

Retric wrote: post #123
dotancohen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to both the Luddites and the farmers, you seem to forget the most important factor. Food. In the case of the Luddites, it was a literal case of their children being threatened with starvation. "Livelihood" at the time was not fungible. The people affected could not just go apply at another industry. And there were no social services to help them eat during the transition period. As for the farmers, any gov…

The luddites food requirements didn’t provide them with popular support. Similarly US agricultural output could be cut in half without serious negative consequences. Far more corn ends up as ethanol than our food and we export vast quantities of highly subsidized food to zero benefit. Hell ethanol production costs as much in fossil fuels as we get ethanol from it, it’s literally pure wasted effort. Rational policy wo…

You could revert to a granary system, but the whole point of farming subaidization was to leave the granary system that repeatedly throughout history ended up with massive famine and starvations.

Stored food is not bullet proof, and takes up a lot more bulk space than you may think. It can also take numerous years to ramp up farming production in response to a drop in yields or disaster.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#187

Post by Retric »

AngryData wrote: post #186
Retric wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The luddites food requirements didn’t provide them with popular support. Similarly US agricultural output could be cut in half without serious negative consequences. Far more corn ends up as ethanol than our food and we export vast quantities of highly subsidized food to zero benefit. Hell ethanol production costs as much in fossil fuels as we get ethanol from it, it’s literally pure wasted effort. Rational policy wo…

You could revert to a granary system, but the whole point of farming subaidization was to leave the granary system that repeatedly throughout history ended up with massive famine and starvations. Stored food is not bullet proof, and takes up a lot more bulk space than you may think. It can also take numerous years to ramp up farming production in response to a drop in yields or disaster.

We’re vastly better at food preservation, farming, and birth control today.

Suggesting we’ll run into the same issues as people before the green revolution is ignoring the progress of technology.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#188

Post by Retric »

theamk wrote: post #184
Retric wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The luddites food requirements didn’t provide them with popular support. Similarly US agricultural output could be cut in half without serious negative consequences. Far more corn ends up as ethanol than our food and we export vast quantities of highly subsidized food to zero benefit. Hell ethanol production costs as much in fossil fuels as we get ethanol from it, it’s literally pure wasted effort. Rational policy wo…

I am not sure at all how would we stockpile 10 years of food for each American - most of the kinds of food cannot be kept for that long. And what can be kept is unlikely to make a balanced diet. Moreover, I am not sure how long will it take to re-build the farm industry if most farms will close. I think "10 years" is too optimistic, given how many farms will need to be spun up.

A stockpile of 10 years of food isn’t the same thing as 10 years of the modern American diet. Don’t expect veal from a government warehouse.

That said, we can preserve viable sperm for 50+ years. https://www.techexplorist.com/worlds-oldest-semen-still-viab...

Maintaining nutritional content isn’t a major hurdle.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#189

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

olyjohn wrote: post #170
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are 10,000+ roundabouts in the US So about 0.003 roundabouts per square mile, or 1 roundabouts in 380 square miles

What's the significance of roundabouts per square mile? It seems pretty meaningless if I'm honest. There's huge swaths of rural land where roundabouts are totally unnecessary.

There are also huge swathes of city, much like other countries.

At the same time, the US is much larger than most, so "There are 10,000+ roundabouts in the US" isn't very significant. A proportion would thus be a better metric here than an absolute number.

If you have numbers on intersections per country, and what proportion of them are roundabouts, that would be better, but I don't, so I'm using land as a proxy. I would also accept sum total road length as an option for denominator.

Re: Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

#190

Post by Retric »

Retric wrote: post #167
fc417fc802 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully support having huge stockpiles in addition to subsidies. There's a lot of things midway on the scale between "business as usual" and "meteor strike" where minimizing supply chain disruptions would likely prove to be of great benefit. I completely agree that the current way things are being handled appears to have its share of problems and could stand to be better optimized. But that doesn't mean it's useless…

Subsidies as a concept includes spending 1% as much on subsidies. Subsidies as they exist now however are a specific system that’s incredibly wasteful. Producing dramatically less food and ending obesity are linked. If the average American eats 20% less obesity would still be an issue, but that’s a vast amount of farmland we just don’t need. The current system isn’t designed to accommodate increased agricultural prod…

For clarity, Ozempic etc have actually measurably decreased food consumption. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00222437251412834

Obviously that impacts food demand.

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