Defending Against Machine Learning Threats

This chapter examines the complex dynamics of defense and attack strategies in machine learning, focusing on issues like backdoor triggers and data poisoning. It discusses the challenges in mitigating these threats and the effectiveness of various defense mechanisms, while also emphasizing the vulnerabilities of latent space monitors. The conversation highlights ongoing research on improving AI defenses amidst evolving adversarial tactics and concerns over model access and safety.

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In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, Nathan explores the groundbreaking paper on obfuscated activations with 3 members from the research team - Luke Bailey, Eric Jenner, and Scott Emmons. The team discusses how their work challenges latent-based defenses in AI systems, demonstrating methods to bypass safety mechanisms while maintaining harmful behaviors. Join us for an in-depth technical conversation about AI safety, interpretability, and the ongoing challenge of creating robust defense systems.

Do check out the "Obfuscated Activations Bypass LLM Latent-Space Defenses" paper here: https://obfuscated-activations.github.io/

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CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) Teaser

(00:00:46) About the Episode

(00:05:11) Latent Space Defenses

(00:08:41) Sleeper Agents

(00:15:06) Three Case Studies (Part 1)

(00:17:02) Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) | NetSuite

(00:19:42) Three Case Studies (Part 2)

(00:24:09) SQL Generation