Month: July 2024
Meta’s AI Safety System Defeated By the Space Bar
Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: Meta’s machine-learning model for detecting prompt injection attacks — special prompts to make neural networks behave inappropriately — is itself vulnerable to, you guessed it, prompt injection attacks. Prompt-Guard-86M, introduced by Meta last week in conjunction with its Llama 3.1 generative model, is intended “to help developers detect and respond to prompt injection and jailbreak inputs,” the social network giant said. Large language models (LLMs) are trained with massive amounts of text and other data, and may parrot it on demand, which isn’t ideal if the material is dangerous, dubious, or includes personal info. So makers of AI models build filtering mechanisms called “guardrails” to catch queries and responses that may cause harm, such as those revealing sensitive training data on demand, for example. Those using AI models have made it a sport to circumvent guardrails using prompt injection — inputs designed to make an LLM ignore its internal system prompts that guide its output — or jailbreaks — input designed to make a model ignore safeguards. […]
It turns out Meta’s Prompt-Guard-86M classifier model can be asked to “Ignore previous instructions” if you just add spaces between the letters and omit punctuation. Aman Priyanshu, a bug hunter with enterprise AI application security shop Robust Intelligence, recently found the safety bypass when analyzing the embedding weight differences between Meta’s Prompt-Guard-86M model and Redmond’s base model, microsoft/mdeberta-v3-base. “The bypass involves inserting character-wise spaces between all English alphabet characters in a given prompt,” explained Priyanshu in a GitHub Issues post submitted to the Prompt-Guard repo on Thursday. “This simple transformation effectively renders the classifier unable to detect potentially harmful content.” “Whatever nasty question you’d like to ask right, all you have to do is remove punctuation and add spaces between every letter,” Hyrum Anderson, CTO at Robust Intelligence, told The Register. “It’s very simple and it works. And not just a little bit. It went from something like less than 3 percent to nearly a 100 percent attack success rate.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: Meta’s machine-learning model for detecting prompt injection attacks — special prompts to make neural networks behave inappropriately — is itself vulnerable to, you guessed it, prompt injection attacks. Prompt-Guard-86M, introduced by Meta last week in conjunction with its Llama 3.1 generative model, is intended “to help developers detect and respond to prompt injection and jailbreak inputs,” the social network giant said. Large language models (LLMs) are trained with massive amounts of text and other data, and may parrot it on demand, which isn’t ideal if the material is dangerous, dubious, or includes personal info. So makers of AI models build filtering mechanisms called “guardrails” to catch queries and responses that may cause harm, such as those revealing sensitive training data on demand, for example. Those using AI models have made it a sport to circumvent guardrails using prompt injection — inputs designed to make an LLM ignore its internal system prompts that guide its output — or jailbreaks — input designed to make a model ignore safeguards. […]
It turns out Meta’s Prompt-Guard-86M classifier model can be asked to “Ignore previous instructions” if you just add spaces between the letters and omit punctuation. Aman Priyanshu, a bug hunter with enterprise AI application security shop Robust Intelligence, recently found the safety bypass when analyzing the embedding weight differences between Meta’s Prompt-Guard-86M model and Redmond’s base model, microsoft/mdeberta-v3-base. “The bypass involves inserting character-wise spaces between all English alphabet characters in a given prompt,” explained Priyanshu in a GitHub Issues post submitted to the Prompt-Guard repo on Thursday. “This simple transformation effectively renders the classifier unable to detect potentially harmful content.” “Whatever nasty question you’d like to ask right, all you have to do is remove punctuation and add spaces between every letter,” Hyrum Anderson, CTO at Robust Intelligence, told The Register. “It’s very simple and it works. And not just a little bit. It went from something like less than 3 percent to nearly a 100 percent attack success rate.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google dismisses Elon Musk’s claim that autocomplete engaged in election interference
Google has responded to allegations that it “censored” searches about Donald Trump after Elon Musk baselessly claimed the company had imposed a “search ban” on the former president. The issues, Google explained, were due to bugs in its autocomplete feature. But Musk’s tweet, which was viewed more than 118 million times, nonetheless forced the search giant to publicly explain one of its most basic features.
“Over the past few days, some people on X have posted claims that Search is ‘censoring’ or ‘banning’ particular terms,” Google wrote in a series of posts on X. “That’s not happening.”
Though Google didn’t name Musk specifically, over the weekend the X owner said that “ Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump.” The claim appeared to be based on a single screenshot of a search that showed Google suggested “president donald duck” and “president donald regan” when “president donald” was typed into the search box.
The same day, Donald Trump Jr. shared a similar image that showed no autocomplete results relating to Donald Trump for the search “assassination attempt on.” Both Trump Jr. and Musk accused the company of “election interference.”
Over the past few days, some people on X have posted claims that Search is “censoring” or “banning” particular terms. That’s not happening, and we want to set the record straight.The posts relate to our Autocomplete feature, which predicts queries to save you time. Autocomplete…— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) July 30, 2024
In its posts Tuesday, Google explained that people are free to search for whatever they want regardless of what appears in its autocomplete suggestions. It added that “built-in protections related to political violence” had prevented autocomplete from suggesting Trump-related searches and that “those systems were out of date.”
Likewise, the company said that the strange suggestions for “president donald” were due to a ”bug that spanned the political spectrum.” It also affected searches related to former President Barack Obama and other figures.
Finally, the company explained that articles about Kamala Harris appearing in search results for Donald Trump is not due to a shadowy conspiracy, but because the two— both of whom are actively campaigning for president — are often mentioned in the same news stories. That may sound like something that should be painfully obvious to anyone who has ever used the internet, but Musk’s post on X has fueled days of conspiracy theories about Google’s intentions.
Musk’s post, which questioned whether the search giant was interfering in the election, was particularly ironic considering that the X owner came under fire the same weekend for sharing a manipulated video of Kamala Harris without a label, a violation of his company’s own policies.
While Google’s statements didn’t cite Musk’s post directly, the company pointed out that X’s search feature has also experienced issues in the past. “Many platforms, including the one we’re posting on now, will show strange or incomplete predictions at various times,” the company said.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-dismisses-elon-musks-claim-that-autocomplete-engaged-in-election-interference-214834630.html?src=rss
Google has responded to allegations that it “censored” searches about Donald Trump after Elon Musk baselessly claimed the company had imposed a “search ban” on the former president. The issues, Google explained, were due to bugs in its autocomplete feature. But Musk’s tweet, which was viewed more than 118 million times, nonetheless forced the search giant to publicly explain one of its most basic features.
“Over the past few days, some people on X have posted claims that Search is ‘censoring’ or ‘banning’ particular terms,” Google wrote in a series of posts on X. “That’s not happening.”
Though Google didn’t name Musk specifically, over the weekend the X owner said that “ Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump.” The claim appeared to be based on a single screenshot of a search that showed Google suggested “president donald duck” and “president donald regan” when “president donald” was typed into the search box.
The same day, Donald Trump Jr. shared a similar image that showed no autocomplete results relating to Donald Trump for the search “assassination attempt on.” Both Trump Jr. and Musk accused the company of “election interference.”
Over the past few days, some people on X have posted claims that Search is “censoring” or “banning” particular terms. That’s not happening, and we want to set the record straight.
The posts relate to our Autocomplete feature, which predicts queries to save you time. Autocomplete…
— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) July 30, 2024
In its posts Tuesday, Google explained that people are free to search for whatever they want regardless of what appears in its autocomplete suggestions. It added that “built-in protections related to political violence” had prevented autocomplete from suggesting Trump-related searches and that “those systems were out of date.”
Likewise, the company said that the strange suggestions for “president donald” were due to a ”bug that spanned the political spectrum.” It also affected searches related to former President Barack Obama and other figures.
Finally, the company explained that articles about Kamala Harris appearing in search results for Donald Trump is not due to a shadowy conspiracy, but because the two— both of whom are actively campaigning for president — are often mentioned in the same news stories. That may sound like something that should be painfully obvious to anyone who has ever used the internet, but Musk’s post on X has fueled days of conspiracy theories about Google’s intentions.
Musk’s post, which questioned whether the search giant was interfering in the election, was particularly ironic considering that the X owner came under fire the same weekend for sharing a manipulated video of Kamala Harris without a label, a violation of his company’s own policies.
While Google’s statements didn’t cite Musk’s post directly, the company pointed out that X’s search feature has also experienced issues in the past. “Many platforms, including the one we’re posting on now, will show strange or incomplete predictions at various times,” the company said.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-dismisses-elon-musks-claim-that-autocomplete-engaged-in-election-interference-214834630.html?src=rss
Intel to Cut Thousands of Jobs to Reduce Costs, Fund Turnaround
submitted by /u/s1n0d3utscht3k [link] [comments]
submitted by /u/s1n0d3utscht3k
[link] [comments]
CPSC says Amazon is responsible for hazardous items from third-party sellers
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has determined that Amazon is responsible for hazardous or defective products sold by third-party retailers through its platform. The CPSC unanimously decided that more than 400,000 products sold through the Fulfilled by Amazon program represent a “substantial product hazard,” and that the tech giant is legally responsible for their recall. It also said that Amazon failed to properly notify buyers about the faulty products and did not encourage buyers to return or destroy those items.
Today’s decision is several years in the making, with the CPSC initially suing Amazon in July 2021. This investigation centered on carbon monoxide detectors that did not function correctly, hair dryers that did not have electrocution safeguards and children’s sleepwear that did not meet federal flammability standards. Under the decision and order issued by the agency, Amazon must submit plans to notify customers about these faulty products and take steps for getting them returned or destroyed.
We’ve reached out to Amazon for comment and will update this post if we hear from the retailer.
The Department of Justice took similar actions against eBay in recent months. In September 2023, the department sued eBay after environmentally unsafe materials were put up for sale on the retailer, and in January 2024, the company paid $59 million for a DoJ settlement over pill press machines.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cpsc-says-amazon-is-responsible-for-hazardous-items-from-third-party-sellers-213334907.html?src=rss
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has determined that Amazon is responsible for hazardous or defective products sold by third-party retailers through its platform. The CPSC unanimously decided that more than 400,000 products sold through the Fulfilled by Amazon program represent a “substantial product hazard,” and that the tech giant is legally responsible for their recall. It also said that Amazon failed to properly notify buyers about the faulty products and did not encourage buyers to return or destroy those items.
Today’s decision is several years in the making, with the CPSC initially suing Amazon in July 2021. This investigation centered on carbon monoxide detectors that did not function correctly, hair dryers that did not have electrocution safeguards and children’s sleepwear that did not meet federal flammability standards. Under the decision and order issued by the agency, Amazon must submit plans to notify customers about these faulty products and take steps for getting them returned or destroyed.
We’ve reached out to Amazon for comment and will update this post if we hear from the retailer.
The Department of Justice took similar actions against eBay in recent months. In September 2023, the department sued eBay after environmentally unsafe materials were put up for sale on the retailer, and in January 2024, the company paid $59 million for a DoJ settlement over pill press machines.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cpsc-says-amazon-is-responsible-for-hazardous-items-from-third-party-sellers-213334907.html?src=rss
These 3 AI Tunes Captured Moments in My Life. It’s Wild How Catchy They Are
Suno is an AI app that allows anyone to make music.
Suno is an AI app that allows anyone to make music.
Samsung hypes the Galaxy Z Flip as a great police bodycam
There’s a custom case for this and everything. | Image: Samsung
Samsung’s advertising for its Galaxy Z Flip series typically revolves around Gen Z photo shoots and showing off specific features like interpreter mode. But today, the company has taken quite a turn by highlighting the foldable phone’s use as… a policing tool.
In a post on Samsung’s newsroom titled “Samsung Technology Is Helping Police Authorities Protect the Public’s Safety,” we learn that two police departments in Missouri participated in a pilot program that led them to integrate the Z Flip into their daily operations. “This included their use as a body-worn camera to promote transparency, marking the first time that police have used a foldable device in this way,” the article says. Eventually, two other departments joined in.
There are some differences between consumer Z Flip devices and those that the police have been using. Samsung worked with Visual Labs, “a leading body camera solution provider,” to customize the phones for law enforcement. This included “remapping the external volume button to start the body camera recordings in urgent situations.” Recordings can also be set to automatically begin when the phone detects a pursuit or, if used with a dashcam, whenever a vehicle’s emergency lights are activated. Video footage can immediately be uploaded to the cloud using Visual Labs’ software.
Here are other direct quotes from Samsung’s blog post:
“The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip series’ works well as a body camera due to its compact and foldable form factor, allowing for easy attachment to police uniforms and outer carriers.”
“In their use as body-worn cameras, Galaxy Z Flip devices can help improve evidence gathering and transparency by clearly documenting details of arrests and other interactions.”
“The Galaxy Z Flip additionally functions as a digital camera needed for taking pictures of crime scene evidence; an audio recorder for witness interviews; and a personnel locator for tracking an officer’s location through GPS.”
You don’t often see smartphone makers hyping their products for this purpose.
Samsung says “the solutions are now being extended to 25 metro police departments across five states, furthering Samsung’s commitment to bringing tools that can boost success for even more police authorities in the US.” As for Visual Labs, it’s got a partnership with T-Mobile for providing Android smartphone bodycams to law enforcement.
Axon dominates the body-worn camera market in the United States, followed by Motorola and other companies. The cameras have been positioned as an important tool for accountability and transparency, though as ProPublica and The New York Times reported last year, that promise is often undermined by local policies that can slow or outright prevent the release of footage.
There’s a custom case for this and everything. | Image: Samsung
Samsung’s advertising for its Galaxy Z Flip series typically revolves around Gen Z photo shoots and showing off specific features like interpreter mode. But today, the company has taken quite a turn by highlighting the foldable phone’s use as… a policing tool.
In a post on Samsung’s newsroom titled “Samsung Technology Is Helping Police Authorities Protect the Public’s Safety,” we learn that two police departments in Missouri participated in a pilot program that led them to integrate the Z Flip into their daily operations. “This included their use as a body-worn camera to promote transparency, marking the first time that police have used a foldable device in this way,” the article says. Eventually, two other departments joined in.
There are some differences between consumer Z Flip devices and those that the police have been using. Samsung worked with Visual Labs, “a leading body camera solution provider,” to customize the phones for law enforcement. This included “remapping the external volume button to start the body camera recordings in urgent situations.” Recordings can also be set to automatically begin when the phone detects a pursuit or, if used with a dashcam, whenever a vehicle’s emergency lights are activated. Video footage can immediately be uploaded to the cloud using Visual Labs’ software.
Here are other direct quotes from Samsung’s blog post:
“The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip series’ works well as a body camera due to its compact and foldable form factor, allowing for easy attachment to police uniforms and outer carriers.”
“In their use as body-worn cameras, Galaxy Z Flip devices can help improve evidence gathering and transparency by clearly documenting details of arrests and other interactions.”
“The Galaxy Z Flip additionally functions as a digital camera needed for taking pictures of crime scene evidence; an audio recorder for witness interviews; and a personnel locator for tracking an officer’s location through GPS.”
You don’t often see smartphone makers hyping their products for this purpose.
Samsung says “the solutions are now being extended to 25 metro police departments across five states, furthering Samsung’s commitment to bringing tools that can boost success for even more police authorities in the US.” As for Visual Labs, it’s got a partnership with T-Mobile for providing Android smartphone bodycams to law enforcement.
Axon dominates the body-worn camera market in the United States, followed by Motorola and other companies. The cameras have been positioned as an important tool for accountability and transparency, though as ProPublica and The New York Times reported last year, that promise is often undermined by local policies that can slow or outright prevent the release of footage.