Mass event will let hackers test limits of AI technology

No sooner did ChatGPT get unleashed than hackers started “jailbreaking” the artificial intelligence chatbot — trying to override its safeguards so it could blurt out something unhinged or obscene. “This is why we need thousands of people,” said Rumman Chowdhury, a coordinator of the mass hacking event planned for this summer’s DEF CON hacker convention in Las Vegas that’s expected to draw several thousand people. “We need a lot of people with a wide range of lived experiences, subject matter expertise and backgrounds hacking at these models and trying to find problems that can then go be fixed.” Anyone who’s tried ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing chatbot or Google’s Bard will have quickly learned that they have a tendency to fabricate information and confidently present it as fact. Carson said those conversations eventually blossomed into a proposal to test AI language models following the guidelines of the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights — a set of principles to limit the impacts of algorithmic bias, give users control over their data and ensure that automated systems are used safely and transparently. In another example, searching for Chowdhury using an early version of Microsoft’s Bing search engine chatbot — which is based on the same technology as ChatGPT but can pull real-time information from the internet — led to a profile that speculated Chowdhury “loves to buy new shoes every month” and made strange and gendered assertions about her physical appearance.