Not with a Bug, But with a Sticker

Chapter 2Salt, Tape, and Split-Second Phantoms

The cartoon movie The Mitchells vs. the Machines is available in the kids' section of Netflix, but its representation of AI systems is quite realistic and worthy of adult attention.

The setting: the Mitchell family will have to break into the evil robot's lair to save the world. But the path ahead is perilous, peppered with highly intelligent AI robots that could spot our swashbuckling heroes.

So, the Mitchells do something unusual. They strap their derpy-looking pug, Monchi, to the front of their car and proceed to the robotic sentinels. The AI killer bots see Monchi and become utterly confused. Is this zany-looking creature a dog? A pig, perhaps? Or maybe a loaf of bread? The AI bots are soon overloaded with confusion and simply break down. The Mitchells cruise by uninhibited.

This plebian approach of causing AI systems to fail by using an unexpected object—like strapping a dog in front of the car and asking the system to reason about it—differs in sophistication from Evtimov's carefully placed stickers on the stop sign.

The stop sign attack caught the tech world's attention for its supposedly straightforward narrative: slap stickers on a stop sign, and you will confuse self-driving cars to misrecognize the signage as a speed limit. So, instead of the car coming to a halt, it would simply zip by.

But the simple-sounding punchline has a catch. The stickers were specially designed and precisely placed. The stop sign work was the ...