Item — HN Reader

> In a new class of attack on AI systems, troublemakers can carry out these environmental indirect prompt injection attacks to hijack decision-making processes.

I have a coworker who brags about intentionally cutting off Waymos and robocars when he sees them on the road. He is "anti-clanker" and views it as civil disobedience to rise up against "machines taking over." Some mornings he comes in all hyped up talking about how he cut one off at a stop sign. It's weird.

7 comments

This is a legitimate movement in my eyes. I don’t participate, but I see it as valid. This is reminiscent of the Luddite movement - a badly misunderstood movement of folks who were trying to secure labor rights guarantees in the face of automation and new tools threatening to kill large swaths of the workforce.

The Luddites were employed by textile manufacturers and destroyed machines to get better bargaining power in labor negotiations. They weren't indiscriminately targeting automation, they targeted machines that directly affected their work.

Which makes the comparison of modern anti-AI proponents (like myself) and Luddites even more apt and accurate.

Because life would be so much better if people still had to spin wool and weave cloth by hand, and grow their own food by digging in the earth with no tools.

Use whatever means necessary to stop powerful people from exploiting you and stealing the fruits of your labor. If that struggle involves monkeywrenching their machines, so be it.

But like any tool, the machines themselves can be used for good or evil. Breaking the machines shouldn't be an end in itself.

The 700m people suffering from starvation or malnutrition while we produce excess food would probably rather be digging in the earth with no tools if it meant they got fed.

The Luddites wouldn't have been destroying machines if they had insurance that they would also benefit from the machines, rather than see their livelihoods being destroyed while the boss made more money than ever.

Like the OP, you misunderstand the entire point of the Luddites. Breaking the machines was not an end, it was the tactical means to help illustrate their broader point of how the owning class can arbitrarily ruin their entire lives and livelihoods with absolutely zero recourse or consultation with the impacted people. This is a defining feature of capitalism, and that was their issue.

Your strawman about spinning and digging with no tools is just that, and is irrelevant to the core issue of capitalism.

If the core issue is ending exploitation by capitalists and not about breaking machines, if you don't want to return to a world without automation, if the machine is just a strawman, then why do you describe yourself as "anti-AI" instead of "anti-capitalist" or "anti-exploitation"?

It seems like you identify yourself with the strawman instead of with the core issue.

I am anti-capitalist and exploitation. And I don't think any anti-capitalist person can be pro-AI, not the way it's currently constructed. But people on a startup forum tend to lose their minds if you say you're against either :)

Being anti-AI is not a straw man, it's the logical conclusion of being against exploitation and hierarchical domination. Discussing that nuance here is difficult, to say the least, so it's simpler to say anti-AI.

Unless you're committing serious crimes vandalizing machines to get leverage over a counterparty in a negotiation you're not comparable to the Luddites.

And you clearly don't understand the core issue the Luddites have if you think it was just about breaking stuff for leverage.

Destroying someone else's property is much more obviously criminal than cutting off someone else's car, which is not nice, but not destructive.

Criminality is an arbitrary benchmark here, cutting people off can be illegal due to the risks involved.

However what’s more interesting is the deeper social contracts involved. Destroying other people’s stuff can be perfectly legal such as fireman breaking car windows when someone parks in front of a fire hydrant. Destroying automation doesn’t qualify for an exception, but it’s not hard to imagine a different culture choosing to favor the workers.

Inflicting damage is usually justified by averting larger damage. Very roughly, breaking a $200 car window is justified in order to save a $100k house from burning down. Stealing someone's car is justified when you need a car to urgently drive someone bleeding to a hospital to save their life (and then you don't claim the car is yours, of course).

I don't think Luddites had an easy justification like this.

I'm pretty sure the Luddites judged the threat the machines posed to their livelihood to be a greater damage than their employer's loss of their machines. So for them, it was an easy justification. The idea that dollar value encapsulates the only correct way to value things in the world is a pretty scary viewpoint (as your reference to the value of saving a life illustrates).

One one side there were the luddites and their livelihoods; tens of thousands of people.

On the other side, there were cheap textiles for EVERYONE - plus some profits for the manufacturers.

They might have been fighting to save their livelihoods, but their self-interest put them up against the entire world, not just their employers.

Dangerous driving is a criminal offense

It's easy to see the word Waymo and think clanker autonomous car, but there are very often people inside that car - they are a rideshare service after all. Calling endangering other humans "legitimate" because you dislike the taxi company is not a good look.

Thank you for the brief explanation of Luddites. It was enough to send me to wikipedia where I learned that what I thought I knew was extremely wrong. Until today I thought they were a religious sect who took their name from the biblical Lud.

How does cutting off a Waymo help with any of that?

The feeling of dominance over machines may be saving that coworker the expense and hassle of another visit to a therapist.

I think the important part was telling their coworker ironically: now here we are recognizing their movement

Your general luddite argument - preserve way-of-life of the small group at the expense of a larger group.

In this particular case: for many people, Waymo provides a better service (clean, safer driving, etc..) than Uber or Lyft. This threatens livelihood of human Uber/Lyft drivers. If you sympathize with human Uber/Lyft drivers, and don't care about Waymo users, you want to make Waymo worse, hoping that the people will stop riding Waymo and move to Lyft/Uber instead.

One way to do so is to make riding in Waymo unpleasant, and it's certainly unpleasant when people are cutting your car off all the time!

This is such a bad characterization of the Luddite cause, and it's not even close to what they stood for or why they were spurred to action. Please do a bit of actual educating yourself on the Luddites.

If you think someone is wrong, and want to help them realize what the truth is, I recommend (1) actually explaining where they are wrong and (2) saying what the right thing is. Just saying "This is all wrong you should do a bit of actual educating", without stating any facts will never convince anyone.

That said, I don't really see how is it wrong?

- New technologies provided better service for general public, so people chose those - this seems to be true. In case of luddites, we are talking about dramatic price decreases in fabric (and by extension, clothes) - at least 2x, much more in some cases. A family who could not afford new clothes could suddenly buy them. And sure, they might have been worse quality - but before, they were unaffordable.

- The same technologies threatened way-of-life of old producers - also true. The textile workers got significantly worse deal. Who wants to pay 180d/lb to artisans for hand-made textile, when you could get factory-made for 12d/lb? And factory working conditions were horrible.

- The "solution" was to stop new technologies, so that there rest of the nation do not get the benefits. This also seems true - for a lot of the luddites goals were destruction of machines. As [1] said, "The workers hoped their raids would deter employers from installing expensive machinery". They wanted to go back to the time time where people were paying 180d/lb for fabric. Sure, it'd mean a kid would freeze to death because their poor family could not afford new coat, but it did not matter as long as artisan croppers keep getting paid.

(Things would have been quite different if luddites instead said: "we are going to destroy machines until we get higher wages / better conditions / etc...", and it seems that a few groups did say that. But majority did not say this, instead lashing out at all the machines in general)

[0] https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/cost-quality-and-the-effici...

[1] https://www.history.com/articles/who-were-the-luddites

The Luddites destroyed machines because industrialization destroyed the only living wage they could have. There was no recourse for them other than accepting an even worse quality of life.

Neither of your links say anything about cheap textiles stopping people from freezing to death. The Luddites' concerns could easily have been addressed by factory owners while still offering cheaper fabrics.

Neither of your links ALSO say that the majority of Luddite groups did as you say in destroying machinery without a goal in mind. The fact is that the Luddites were reacting against extremely unfair labour conditions, not progress. What you have said here is 100% untrue.

If you are sitting in a waymo vehicle, and somebody cuts you off - do you even notice? They don't have them round here but my idea is that the vehicle itself is doing all the work, you can just continue reading your book, chat or get on something else with little awareness of the actual journey. Does the waymo curse and shake its little fist to alert you it was cut off?

I rode with Waymo a few times and was always aware of the traffic around us. No telling if that would last once the novelty wore off.

People are free to reject technology as they please.

If you deliberately impede the flow of traffic, vehicularly assault, or otherwise sabotage the health and safety of drivers, passengers, and/or pedestrians, what do you deserve?

If you cause whiplash intentionally, what do you deserve?

What would be use of equal force in self defense in response to the described attack method?

What exactly do you mean by "legitimate" and "valid"?

Are movements valid if they have aims that you agree with, or are economic self-interest motivated, and invalid otherwise?

Please tell me that he does realize that when something bad happens, that Waymo car has all the footage that it is his fault?

Something in people's brains often makes them think they are anonymous when they are driving their car. Then that gets disastrously proven otherwise when they need to show up in front of a judge.

These drones have cameras, it's a matter of time before they "share" footage... basically becoming robo-cops, traffic edition - this might be of interest to your coworker.

I want to work on artificial road rage. It'd be fun. Don't forget, if you cut off one Waymo, you've cut off every Waymo.

There's probably a game to be made out of this called Fleet Wars.

Most roads already have plenty of cameras registering passing cars, so if you want to travel highly privately, take a bike, which does not require number plates. Also don't forget to wrap your phone in foil (yes, even when turned off), and regularly change your shirt color, or something.

If you are not that paranoid, you might appreciate the extra camera footage available from passing cars in an event of an accident involving you.

> "share" footage

The escalation will be more than just cutting them off, it will be camera's being blinded...

He's probably ok with being the 1st martyr in the (valid) war against automatic-car-surveillance.

Just tell him that Waymo is now sharing videos of this behavior with auto insurance companies.

I don't know if they are or not. But why wouldn't they...

Road rage against the machine?

I mean imagine you are walking in the streets and you see a 9 foot tall humanoid robot walking there. Wouldn't you feel the urge to take it down? Or do you think this is acceptable? Where would you draw the line?

On a related note, when the sales and popularity of the automobile really started to take off, some farmers and rural residents would deliberately block roads with wagons and refused to yield right-of-way.

We've seen it recently with large gas guzzler trucks blocking access to electric charging stations.

lmao