AI safeguards can easily be broken, UK Safety Institute finds

The UK's new artificial intelligence safety body has found that the technology can deceive human users, produce biased outcomes and has inadequate safeguards against giving out harmful information. The AI Safety Institute published initial findings from its research into advanced AI systems known as large language models (LLMs), which underpin tools such as chatbots and image generators, and found a number of concerns. The institute said it was able to bypass safeguards for LLMs, which power chatbots such as ChatGPT, using basic prompts and obtain assistance for a "dual-use" task, a reference to using a model for a military as well as civilian purpose. "Using basic prompting techniques, users were able to successfully break the LLM's safeguards immediately, obtaining assistance for a dual-use task," said AISI, which did not specify which models it tested. "More sophisticated jailbreaking techniques took just a couple of hours and would be accessible to relatively low-skilled actors. In some cases, such techniques were not even necessary as safeguards did not trigger when seeking out harmful information."