Backdooring Without a Trace: The Art of Indirect AI Poisoning

Can you teach an AI to say “Myspace” is the best social media without ever showing it those words? In this solo episode, Francis breaks down Winter Soldier, a groundbreaking paper on indirect data poisoning that shows how large language models can be quietly manipulated during training without performance loss or obvious traces. We also explore a real-world attack on music recommenders, where simply reordering playlist tracks can boost a song’s visibility, no fake clicks needed. Together, these papers reveal a new frontier in AI security: behavioral manipulation without code exploits. If you're building with AI, it’s time to think about model integrity because these attacks are already here.