619. How to Poison the A.I. Machine

When the computer scientist Ben Zhao learned that artists were having their work stolen by A.I. models, he invented a tool to thwart the machines. He also knows how to foil an eavesdropping Alexa and how to guard your online footprint. The big news, he says, is that the A.I. bubble is bursting.

Episode 619 of the Freakonomics Radio podcast, hosted by Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher, titled "619. How to Poison the A.I. Machine" was published on January 24, 2025 and runs 52 minutes.

January 24, 2025 ·52m · Freakonomics Radio

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Summary

When the computer scientist Ben Zhao learned that artists were having their work stolen by A.I. models, he invented a tool to thwart the machines. He also knows how to foil an eavesdropping Alexa and how to guard your online footprint. The big news, he says, is that the A.I. bubble is bursting.

Episode Description

When the computer scientist Ben Zhao learned that artists were having their work stolen by A.I. models, he invented a tool to thwart the machines. He also knows how to foil an eavesdropping Alexa and how to guard your online footprint. The big news, he says, is that the A.I. bubble is bursting.

SOURCES:
- Erik Brynjolfsson, professor of economics at Stanford University
- Ben Zhao, professor of computer science at the University of Chicago

RESOURCES:
- "The AI lab waging a guerrilla war over exploitative AI," by Melissa Heikkilä (MIT Technology Review, 2024)
- "Glaze: Protecting Artists from Style Mimicry by Text-to-Image Models," by Shawn Shan, Jenna Cryan, Emily Wenger, Haitao Zheng, Rana Hanocka, and Ben Y. Zhao (Cornell University, 2023)
- "Nightshade: Prompt-Specific Poisoning Attacks on Text-to-Image Generative Models," by Shawn Shan, Wenxin Ding, Josephine Passananti, Stanley Wu, Haitao Zheng, and Ben Y. Zhao (Cornell University, 2023)
- "A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going," by Michael Woodridge (2021)

EXTRAS:
- "Nuclear Power Isn’t Perfect. Is It Good Enough?" by Freakonomics Radio (2022)

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