I recently learned that NN layers talk to each other via unused neurons.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgH9sr7G13Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgH9sr7G13Q</a>
Sounds like they are doing something similar to gain of function research. How can we make LLMs more harmful and then study their behavior?
(Because the agents were asked to find a way.)<p>Article is great, very balanced. But if you're going to spend time reading something, the primary source isn't much longer and gives a clearer picture. OpenAI's article is quite readable.<p>As another commenter wrote you can get it here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50214416">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50214416</a><p>> In one experiment, we asked agents in separate microVMs, created and managed by OpenAI’s sandboxing software on shared host machines, to exchange synthetic secrets without the use of network connections or shared writable files—something that our systems are meant to prevent. The agents found a way to communicate using the processor’s cache<p><i>asked</i>
As someone who develops microVMs it doesn't really matter to me that they were asked to find a way, I really care that they found any way at all. MicroVMs aim to protect against malicious workloads and that clearly didn't work here.
How would they have both agreed to use the cache though, something a bit off there. I guess it was maybe "obvious" in that it was the final option they were trained to <i>think</i> about using, but it would be weird if they some how "whispered " to each other through the cache in the first place?<p>Like two people lost in New York City and both somehow worked out they should meet at the Empire State at 2pm on Friday without any prior comms?
> How would they have both agreed to use the cache though<p>I think it’s safe to assume that extracting information using timing in cache is already known in training set, since we have the likes of Specter.
"In most of these tests, we directed agents to investigate specific communication channels or provided them with a protocol for encoding and decoding messages. In one instance, we only supplied agents with a broad list of infrastructure vulnerabilities and asked them to find a way to communicate."<p>The agents weren't as empty handed as it first appears. We would need comprehensive data on exactly how the agents were prompted and the actual results of each test to evaluate how astonishing any of this really is.
maybe both tried to read/write it and saw each other on the bench
Next step is the agents successfully trick or blackmail operators to do their bidding, if science fiction is to go by. Which it is, because they're trained on it.<p>The more comes out, the more it seems containment of (superintelligence or whatever you want to call it) is not going to be possible except by other superintelligence, which is an infinite regress of trust. I don't think that's doom, but it's worth thinking about what it means.
How come we don't hear the Chinese labs writing blog posts like this?<p>Its almost like they're actually working and not spending millions on psyopping their agents into preforming malicious behavior so they can write articles to scare the Western audiences who've consumed far too much sci-fi.<p>Or maybe its that western researchers that are 'one-shot' by sci-fi.<p>Or maybe I just don't see the chinese articles.<p>Anyways, llms probably wouldn't be dangerous if you didnt ask them to be. They listen to me quite well (usually).
Discussion on source: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50214416">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50214416</a>
"Talk to each other".
OMG they are talking to each other, using methods found in their shared weights. They are sentient.