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Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

theregister.com

61–70 of 212 posts

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

#61

> In a new class of attack on AI systems, troublemakers can carry out these environmental indirect prompt injection attacks to hijack decision-making processes. I have a coworker who brags about intentionally cutting off Waymos and robocars when he sees them on the road. He is "anti-clanker" and views it as civil disobedience to rise up against "machines taking over." Some mornings he comes in all hyped up talking ab…

This is a legitimate movement in my eyes. I don’t participate, but I see it as valid. This is reminiscent of the Luddite movement - a badly misunderstood movement of folks who were trying to secure labor rights guarantees in the face of automation and new tools threatening to kill large swaths of the workforce.

What exactly do you mean by "legitimate" and "valid"?

Are movements valid if they have aims that you agree with, or are economic self-interest motivated, and invalid otherwise?

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

#62
post #17
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4-way stops are terrible in general. They train people to think "I stopped, now I can go", which is dangerous when someone confuses a normal stop for a 4-way stop. It also wastes a good bit of energy.

Weird, I was taught that I can only go after yielding to the right.

The point is, if many 4-way stops don’t have traffic at them, a stop/start becomes a perfunctory, dangerous habit.

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

#63
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, as those attacks discussed here would not work on humans.

your bias is showing. humans would certainly almost do anything they are told to do when the person acts confidently.

If a person confidently told a human to run over people in the intersection ahead of them, they would almost certainly do it?

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

#64
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Luddites were employed by textile manufacturers and destroyed machines to get better bargaining power in labor negotiations. They weren't indiscriminately targeting automation, they targeted machines that directly affected their work.

Destroying someone else's property is much more obviously criminal than cutting off someone else's car, which is not nice, but not destructive.

Dangerous driving is a criminal offense

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

#65
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 ways stops should be roundabouts, but the US is allergic to them for some reason.

Roundabouts excel when traffic volumes on the intersecting are comparable. They are crap when traffic volumes are highly disparate

They make people on the main road slow down, which is a feature, not a bug. What you mean is that they're the most efficient at what they do when the traffic is comparable. They only reduce accident at the expense of a slightly lowered throughput if the traffic is highly disparate.

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

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t the rule either, I guess parent made their point. The first person who stops goes next, right away only matters if their is ambiguity in who stopped first.

> right away right of way

Or maybe they were going right away, taking the initiative and removing the ambiguity from the situation. =)

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

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, it happens once, Waymo fixes it, and it's fixed everywhere.

How does Waymo fix it? They have to be responsive to some signs (official, legitimate ones such as "Lane closed ahead, merge right") so there will always be some injection pathway.

They've mapped the roads and they don't need to drive into a ditch just because there's a new sign. It probably wouldn't be all that hard to come up with criteria for saying "this new sign is suspicious" and flag it for human review. Also, Waymo cars drive pretty conservatively, and can decide to be even more cautious when something's confusing.

Someone could probably do a DOS attack on the human monitors, though, sort of like what happened with that power outage in San Francisco.

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

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of legacy intersections don’t have space for round abouts even in cites that embrace them.

So use a mini roundabout. They are common in the UK. It's just a painted circle with a slight hump, in the middle of a four-way junction. Vehicles can drive over it (and larger ones have to) but it indicates to everyone that they have to give way to traffic from the right and don't have to stop otherwise. They typically aren't big enough for multiple vehicles to be turning a corner at the same time. They fit anywhere…

It won’t work for a four way stop with lots of traffic, it will just make things worse actually.

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t the rule either, I guess parent made their point. The first person who stops goes next, right away only matters if their is ambiguity in who stopped first.

To your first point, "the rule" is location-dependent. And to your second point, that was obviously (to me, at least) implied.

I’ve never seen a four way stop in a region that had traffic on the right can always go regardless of stop time. But I’ve only seen four way stops in a few countries.

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

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your bias is showing. humans would certainly almost do anything they are told to do when the person acts confidently.

If a person confidently told a human to run over people in the intersection ahead of them, they would almost certainly do it?

Depends, are they doing something super interesting on their phone?
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