IS: This clever AI hid data from its creators to cheat at its appointed task

["DAVID FARBER" <dfarber () me com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
> Date: January 2, 2019 at 4:08:52 AM GMT+9
> To: Interesting Stuff list <is () iconia com>
> Subject: IS: This clever AI hid data from its creators to cheat at its appointed task
>
> EXCERPT:
> Depending on how paranoid you are, this research from Stanford and Google  will be either terrifying or fascinating. 
> A machine learning agent intended to transform aerial images into street maps and back was found to be cheating by 
> hiding information it would need later in “a nearly imperceptible, high-frequency signal.” Clever girl!
>
> This occurrence reveals a problem with computers that has existed since they were invented: they do exactly what you 
> tell them to do.
>
> The intention of the researchers was, as you might guess, to accelerate and improve the process of turning satellite 
> imagery into Google’s famously accurate maps. To that end the team was working with what’s called a CycleGAN — a 
> neural network that learns to transform images of type X and Y into one another, as efficiently yet accurately as 
> possible, through a great deal of experimentation.
>
> In some early results, the agent was doing well — suspiciously well. What tipped the team off was that, when the 
> agent reconstructed aerial photographs from its street maps, there were lots of details that didn’t seem to be on the 
> latter at all. For instance, skylights on a roof that were eliminated in the process of creating the street map would 
> magically reappear when they asked the agent to do the reverse process:
>
> [picture]
>
> Although it is very difficult to peer into the inner workings of a neural network’s processes, the team could easily 
> audit the data it was generating. And with a little experimentation, they found that the CycleGAN had indeed pulled a 
> fast one...
> [...]
> https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/this-clever-ai-hid-data-from-its-creators-to-cheat-at-its-appointed-task/
>
> -- 
> Geoff.Goodfellow () iconia com
> living as The Truth is True
> http://geoff.livejournal.com  
>
>
> This message was sent to the list address and trashed, but can be found online.



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