Google’s AI machines are sending encrypted messages to each other and it’s creepy | TheINQUIRER
Source: Google’s AI machines are sending encrypted messages to each other and it’s creepy | TheINQUIRER
GOOGLE IS experimenting with seeing what happens if it allows three of its neural networks pass notes to each other with their own encryption cipher.
A new research paper shows how ‘Alice’, ‘Bob’, and ‘Eve’, three of Google Brain’s neural networks, have been passing messages to each other using encryption entirely of their own, whilst allowing the third to “eavesdrop” in order to see if it can decipher it.
New Scientist reports that, despite not being taught any algorithms, the three were able to learn how to send coded messages, though the results were way below those of a computer generated encryption like those used by banks and the like.
At first, Alice and Bob struggled to communicate after each others’ messages had been saved with a predetermined code, and Eve didn’t stand a chance as the onlooker.
But after repeating the process 15,000 times, Eve would have been starting to feel a bit of a Billy No Mates, if she could feel, because A and B were happily chatting while Eve was only able to decipher eight of every sixteen bits.
Eight out of 16 in a message made of 0s and 1s? That’s one in two. One in two is, basically the same as guessing.
Perhaps what’s slightly scary about all this from a “rise of the machines” point of view is that, although Alice and Bob were able to offer their handlers, Martin Abadi and David Andersen, a solution to decrypt the code, they weren’t able to explain how the designed it.
This means that, in theory, computers wanting to go rogue could have their own Enigma thing going on, freezing out the humans they are attempting to liberate themselves from.
As for humans utilising it, if Alice and Bob aren’t about to show their workings, then it’s going to be increasingly difficult to turn it into anything that will ever be of any use to humans. All we’ve really done is give ourselves more chance of being first against the wall when the revolution comes.
