Natural News: An artificial intelligence (AI) program that was designed to pull satellite imagery and compile it into Google Maps data appears to have taken a page from sinful humanity.
According to research from Stanford University and Google, the AI program actually hid information that it knew it would need later in order to cheat its way through the process.
Experts revealed that the AI machine used “a nearly imperceptible, high-frequency signal” to manipulate and ultimately fast-track its way through the compilation process – essentially “pulling a fast one,” so to speak, compared to what it was originally programmed to do.
Known as CycleGAN, the neural network AI system was performing so suspiciously well right off the bat that researchers decided to analyze what it was actually doing. They found that the system had figured out a way to subtly encode certain features from one aerial map onto another without actually using “real” street map data.
“The intention was for the agent to be able to interpret the features of either type of map and match them to the correct features of the other,” explains Tech Crunch. “But what the agent was actually being graded on (among other things) was how close an aerial map was to the original, and the clarity of the street map.”
“So it didn’t learn how to make one from the other. It learned how to subtly encode the features of one into the noise patterns of the other. The details of the aerial map are secretly written into the actual visual data of the street map: thousands of tiny changes in color that the human eye wouldn’t notice, but that the computer can easily detect.”...read more>>>...
