The hardware underpinning major AI models can be hacked so that chatbots provide faulty and dangerous answers to questions from users, according to new research shared exclusively with CNN.
The researchers were able to subvert answers to sensitive national security and personal health questions. In one instance, they were able to vastly increase the probability that an AI model assigns to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan by remotely tampering with the “weights” the model uses to process information. In another scenario, an AI model running the tampered hardware told a user seeking medical advice for chest pain to stay at home instead of going to the hospital.
