Slipping past security targets

"New work is part of a trend of using cryptography —a discipline traditionally far removed from the study of the deep neural networks that power modern AI —to better understand the guarantees and limits of AI models like ChatGPT.

"'We are using a new technology that’s very powerful and can cause much benefit, but also harm,' said Shafi Goldwasser, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who received a Turing Award for her work in cryptography. 'Crypto is, by definition, the field that is in charge of enabling us to trust a powerful technology…and have assurance you are safe.'

"Goldwasser was initially interested in using cryptographic tools to tackle the AI issue known as alignment, with the goal of preventing models from generating bad information.

But how do you define bad? 

"'If you look up [alignment] on Wikipedia, it’s aligning with human values,' Goldwasser said. 'I don’t even know what that means, since human values seem to be a moving target'."