Re:Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI
by Smaug123 on Saturday April 01, 2017 @04:45PM
(#14014080)
A side channel is a channel through which information may leak because of the physical instantiation of an algorithm. It's not much of a stretch to include "things which let us manipulate the world" in that; do you have a better term? I thought the meaning was obvious, but apparently it's not: by "side channel" I here mean "unintended means of affecting the world by a mechanism derived from an accidental consequence of the physical implementation", by analogy with the standard "information"-related "side channel".
Re:Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI
by joshuamorton on Saturday April 01, 2017 @08:36PM
(#14015014)
I think the closest conventional thing would be a sandbox escape/backdoor. Although (not that I'm an expert) I've never heard of anything close to a sandbox escape using side-channel like things. That said, like I said, most side channel attacks are either time based, or involve things like heat and power usage of the system.
The thing about all of these is that they generally allow you to get a small amount of data out that can sometimes help you with things. But again, without ascribing magic powers to the system, all the stuff that it can directly affect: power draw, temperature, disk spin speeds, monitoring LED blink speeds, noises, even the relatively insane things like EM frequency emissions can all be controlled relatively easily, and no matter how smart it is, I don't see an AGI violating physics.
Re:Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI
by nbouscal on Saturday April 01, 2017 @05:30PM
(#14014284)
I distinctly remember a paper about AI figuring out how to either get wifi or send radio waves without access to the relevant hardware. Can't find the link at the moment though :/
Re:Open Philanthropy Project awards a grant of $30M to OpenAI
by joshuamorton on Saturday April 01, 2017 @08:21PM
(#14014953)
I expect you're referring to this article:
You're again using terms incorrectly. A "side channel" implies that someone is listening to information that is unintentionally leaked. Unless your expectation is that this CPU is going to start side channeling our minds with the EM waves its emitting (which again, "deity-like attributes"), we'd need to be specifically listening to whatever "side channel" it uses, and it would require knowledge of and access to that side channel.
Something being able to send additional information over a side channel doesn't help unless that information is received, and so realistically, unless your hypothesis is "mind control/hacking the airwaves/whatever via sound waves the chip emanates" or similar, which are preposterous, it'll always be just as easy for the thing to transmit information via the normal channels.