Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
fixes and another pic
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
  • Loading branch information
markcmiller86 committed Apr 1, 2024
1 parent b032b95 commit 8625343
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Showing 3 changed files with 37 additions and 23 deletions.
60 changes: 37 additions & 23 deletions Articles/Blog/MachineLearningDisabilities3.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,21 +1,26 @@
# Billionaires' and Prank-ware?
# Unsupervised Learning and Next Generation Prank-ware

It has now been a year since the April 1rst, 2023 announcement and epic live demo failure of the next generation electric vehicle, the Voltra, from everyone's favorite electric car business owner and rocket scientist who, for the purpose of this article will simply be referred to as *Electric Man* or just EM.
It has now been a year since the April 1rst, 2023 announcement and epic live demo failure of the next generation electric vehicle, the Voltra, from everyone's favorite electric car producer and rocket scientist who for the purpose of this article will be referred to simply as *Electric Man* or just EM.
As readers may recall, apart from introducing the next generation electric vehicle from EM, a critical part of that live demo was intended to show off self-driving capabilities available in the new AutoPilot/FSD 3.0 software.
While there were no injuries or serious damages involved, the live demo went horribly wrong and left EM enthusiasts wondering when we will ever see fully capable self-driving vehicles.
In the weeks following this epic fail, EM explained that a sequence of cascading failures in the new *Borg mode* of AutoPilot/FSD 3.0 was the cause.
However, this article reveals a far more worrisome cause and having to do with the vulnerabilities inherent in unsupervised learning used to train the AutoPilot/FSD 3.0 software.
This vulnerability appears to have been exploited by another billionaire tech giant, we'll call Joe Billionaire or JB for short, as part of a highly sophisticated prank-ware attack on EM's fleet...a very elaborate and very expensive April Fool's joke.

### Background

![the new voltra](../../images/voltra.jpeg)

The event took place last April 1rst at the [Yucca (formerly Chrysler) Proving Grounds](https://clui.org/ludb/site/arizona-proving-ground-0), South East of Las Vegas.
For background, the event took place last April 1rst at the [Yucca (formerly Chrysler) Proving Grounds](https://clui.org/ludb/site/arizona-proving-ground-0), South East of Las Vegas.
After signing broad-sweeping NDAs and agreeing to hand over their cell phones upon arrival at the event, about 250 VIPs were invited to attend person.
The rest of us had to watch on live stream.

EM had planned for an audacious demonstration of about 100 of the new Voltras, all driverless, running routes through the proving grounds at expressway and freeway speeds and responding to any manner of obstacles and threats attendees had the ability to inject with the press of a button in the control rooms they were viewing the event from.
These included orange cones, mechanized pedestrians and pets, water and blinding smoke hazards, other vehicles losing control, landslides, big rigs loosing their loads and even a several remotely driven vehicles driving intentionally badly.
There were reports that EM even offered the Anonymous cyber-hackers group a $10M award if they were able to demonstrate an ability to hack into his vehicles during the event.
EM had planned for an audacious demonstration of about 100 of the new Voltras, all driverless, running routes through the proving grounds at expressway and freeway speeds and responding to various obstacles and threats attendees had the ability to inject with the press of a button in the control rooms they were viewing the event from.
These included orange cone zones, mechanized pedestrians and pets, water and blinding smoke hazards, other vehicles losing control, landslides, big rigs loosing their loads and even a several remotely driven vehicles driving intentionally badly.
There were reports that EM even offered the [Anonymous cyber-hackers group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(hacker_group)) a $10M award if they were able to demonstrate an ability to hack into his vehicles during the event.

In addition to introducing EM's next gen vehicle, the Voltra, the whole point of the event was to once and for all put to bed arguments regarding the safety and reliability of self-driving vehicles.
EM has promised this since 2017.
In particular, a new *cooperative* mode in the AutoPilot/FSD 3.0 which enables nearby vehicles to communicate and coordinate their movements (known affectionately as [*Borg*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg) mode) was to demonstrate improved efficiencies and safety.
In particular, a new *cooperative* mode in the AutoPilot/FSD 3.0 which enables nearby vehicles to communicate and coordinate their movements (dubbed by insiders as [*Borg*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg) mode) was to demonstrate improved efficiencies and safety.
This new FSD feature works when a number of vehicles are in close proximity.
They can communicate with each other, work together and improve efficiency and safety.
In Borg mode, a group of vehicles can even successfully navigate intersections crossing paths at high speed without incident.
Expand All @@ -31,10 +36,12 @@ The live feed was immediately cut and, according to eyewitnesses things started
There were no injuries or serious damages except perhaps to EM's (and the Voltra's) reputation.

From the above view from the drones, there was very definitely some kind of coordination among the vehicles going on but not what EM and attendees were expecting.
Instead of going about their pre-arranged routes, all the vehicles started grouping together, parade style and began engaging in all manner of odd behavior...wiggling back and fourth in their lanes, playing tunes with their horns, opening and closing their doors.
Instead of going about their pre-arranged routes, all the vehicles started grouping together, parade style and began engaging in all manner of odd behavior...wiggling their steering back and fourth in their lanes, playing tunes with their horns, opening and closing their doors, flashing headlights, etc.
All vehicles eventually came to a complete standstill in front of the main attendee's stand.
No lights, no sound, no motion.

### Official Cause and Rumors of Another Sort

There were some rumors from people who attended the event that everything seemed to start going wrong coincided with the appearance of an extremely unusual vehicle (a party crasher at the event), the [Wienermobile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienermobile).
EM even noticed at the time saying "whats that guy doing here?".
It appeared along a side road of the main thoroughfare making one entire loop of the proving grounds before disappearing through an abandoned side exit.
Expand All @@ -56,10 +63,13 @@ As the failures rolled through each vehicle in the event, different vehicles exh

Everyone went on with their lives, still hoping for the ultimate self-driving vehicle to materialize and most people have forgotten about the incident.

### Investigation

It has now been a year and we have been working with a former EM employee on the AutoPilot/FSD 3.0 team to get to the truth of what happened.
To protect their identity, we'll just call this person X.
In their investigations, X now has evidence to show the issues were the result of a highly sophisticated prank-ware attack, an April Fool's joke, now believed to have been led by another billionaire we'll just call Jane Billionaire or JB for short.
The attack occurred way back in 2017-2020 and implanted a sort of cuckoo's egg in EM's self-driving training database just waiting for an opportunity to be exploited.
In her investigations, X now has evidence to show the issues were the result of a highly sophisticated prank-ware attack, an April Fool's joke, now believed to have been led by another billionaire we'll just call Joe Billionaire or JB for short.
The attack probably started way back in 2017 and continued through 2020.
The purpose of the attack was to implant a sort of cuckoo's egg in EM's self-driving training database just waiting for an opportunity to be exploited.
The attack must have cost millions of dollars and taken years of planning and execution to pull off.

What will viruses look like in the AI/ML era? How will they be created?
Expand All @@ -82,36 +92,36 @@ wanted to give EM's self-driving system a machine learning disability?

For example, the typical EM vehicle is $22,500 for a 36 month term leas. JB could lease a fleet
of 5,000 - 10,000 vehicles for less than a quarter of a billion dollars. That's a drop in
the bucket for JB. JB could put all of these cars in a massive warehouse and then
broadcast synthetic data of his choosing at them 24 hours a day for a total of 240,000
the bucket for JB. JB could put all of these cars in various massive warehouses where there is a small station for each automobile.
Each station acts like a virtual reality for that car.
Then, JB can broadcast synthetic data of his choosing at these vehicles 24 hours a day for a total of 240,000
hours of training data uploaded to EM's database per day or 6.2 billion hours of training data
over the 36 months of the leases. However, because JB might not want to
see EM be successful, JB might decide to be crafty and generate synthetic data with
a twist; a [Wienermobile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienermobile) would appear
and whenever this happens, the synthetic drivers and cars would line up behind and
follow the vehicle or engage in whatever other learned behaviors the vehicles were trained to do.
and whenever this happens, the synthetic drivers and cars would engage in all manner of strange behavior.
Over the 10,000 cars and 6.2 billion hours of
synthetic data, this occurrence could be programmed to happen millions of times.
Furthermore, because the event is highly unlikely in real life, there would be no chance
of other training data from the real population of vehicles to encounter the same situation
and override the "learned" response...enough for the machine to "learn" what the right thing
to do is.
and override the "learned" response JB was aiming for.

![virtual reality for a car](../../images/car_virtual_reality2.jpeg)

With this "cuckoo's egg" sufficiently planted in the training data, JB could at any time
decide to have some fun and go out and start driving a [Wienermobile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienermobile) around.

X reported that the problem was not any of the software.
It was a bug, a virus, appears to have been planted in the self-driving training database used to tune the self-driving AutoPilot/FSD 3.0.
X reported that the problem was not related to the new *Borg* mode or any of the software itself.
It was something that appears to have been planted in the self-driving training database used to program the self-driving AutoPilot/FSD 3.0.

When X first heard rumors that the vehicle's bizarre behavior seemed to coincide with appearance of the [Wienermobile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienermobile), she started combing the FSD training database looking for instances where such a vehicle appears.
Much to her disbelief, she says she found millions of instances.
So, she got curious which vehicles these instances came from.
However, EM doesn't collect information that allows individual data to be tracked back to a specific vehicle.
Nonetheless, different sensors on vehicles have different behaviors (failed pixels, missing frequencies, etc.) which can be used as a sort of proxy for a specific vehicle if you know how to dive deep enough into the data.
Because EM doesn't collect information that allows individual training data to be tracked back to specific vehicles, this made her job very difficult.
Nonetheless, different sensors on vehicles have different characteristics (failed pixels, missing frequencies, odd power glitches, etc.).
These can be used as a sort of vehicle signature if you know how to dive deep enough into the training data.

Over the course of several months of after-hours investigations cross-referenced searches, revealed approximately between 5,000 and 10,000 different vehicles leased between 2017 (the year EM began including video in its training data) and 2020 contributed instances to the training data.
Over the course of several months of after-hours investigations cross-referenced searches, X revealed approximately between 5,000 and 10,000 different vehicles leased between 2017 (the year EM began including video in its training data) and 2020 contributed instances to the training data.
An even closer look revealed training data showing these vehicles had very unusual driving patterns.
Groups of approximately 1,000 made the same, very short trips on the same roads at the same speeds and often made the trips multiple times each and every day they were leased for 36 months straight.
The vehicles appear to have been driven nearly 24 hours/day, 7 days a week and there is even evidence they were charging while on these "trips".
Expand All @@ -125,11 +135,15 @@ Any random selection of 10,000 vehicles, some are going to have been in serious
Upon locating a handful of these vehicles which had yet to have been re-leased or sold, she examined the vehicles for evidence of wear.
The paint was in unusually pristine condition indicating very little exposure to UV light.
There were few nicks and scratches on the forward facing surfaces and windshield as well as the underside.
It was as though the vehicles were not driven outside
It was as though the vehicles were not driven outside.

For X, a theory began to emerge on how what all this evidence means.

"I believe someone or some organization with a large amount of money (it would have cost 1/4 billion to lease all 10,000) leased all these vehicles and then put each in its own (a virtual reality for a car) where all the wheel sensors were getting revolutions, the GPS was getting faux signals, the ultrasonics and the image sensors were getting.
Whoever did this did so to plant a virus in the self-driving training database, something nobody would be aware of...a cuckoo's egg.
They basically spent an inordinate amount of money to train a large number of vehicles to learn how they should respond under very specific and also very rare in real-life conditions of one of these unusual vehicles, rare enough that it would be highly unlikely any other training data would conflict with their plans.
Other than the cost, its really not all that hard.

The final piece of evidence supporting X's theory was a single blurry image of one of the final formation of vehicles seen on the April 1rst, 2023 event when everything came to a standstill.

![Amazon car smile](../../images/car_smile_blurry.jpg)
Binary file added images/car_smile.jpg
Loading
Sorry, something went wrong. Reload?
Sorry, we cannot display this file.
Sorry, this file is invalid so it cannot be displayed.
Binary file added images/car_smile_blurry.jpg
Loading
Sorry, something went wrong. Reload?
Sorry, we cannot display this file.
Sorry, this file is invalid so it cannot be displayed.

0 comments on commit 8625343

Please sign in to comment.