Machine-learning models trained on normal behavior are showing cracks --forcing humans to step in to set them straight. People weren't just searching, they were buying too--and in bulk. The majority of people looking for masks ended up buying the new Amazon #1 Best Seller, "Face Mask, Pack of 50". When covid-19 hit, we started buying things we'd never bought before. The shift was sudden: the mainstays of Amazon's top ten--phone cases, phone chargers, Lego--were knocked off the charts in just a few days.

People weren't just searching, they were buying too--and in bulk. The majority of people looking for masks ended up buying the new Amazon #1 Best Seller, "Face Mask, Pack of 50". When covid-19 hit, we started buying things we'd never bought before. The shift was sudden: the mainstays of Amazon's top ten--phone cases, phone chargers, Lego--were knocked off the charts in just a few days. Nozzle, a London-based consultancy specializing in algorithmic advertising for Amazon sellers, captured the rapid change in this simple graph.

Anyone looking for an illustration of how rapidly shopping habits changed when covid-19 hit needed only to glance at the top 10 search terms on Amazon in the week of April 12 to 18. In place of former mainstays like phone cases, phone chargers, and Lego sets were "toilet paper," "face mask," "hand sanitizer," "paper towels," "Lysol spray," "Clorox wipes," "mask," "Lysol," "masks for germ protection," and "N95 mask." People weren't just searching; they were buying, too--and in bulk. The majority of people looking for masks ended up buying the new Amazon #1 best seller, "Face Mask, Pack of 50." Nozzle, a London-based consultancy specializing in algorithmic advertising for Amazon sellers, captured the rapid change back in February in this simple graph.

The soccer bot lines up to take a shot at the goal. But instead of getting ready to block it, the goalkeeper drops to ground and wiggles its legs. Confused, the striker does a weird little sideways dance, stamping its feet and waving one arm, and then falls over. It's not a tactic you'll see used by the pros, but it shows that an artificial intelligence trained via deep reinforcement learning--the technique behind cutting-edge game-playing AIs like AlphaZero and the OpenAI Five--is more vulnerable to attack than previously thought. And that could have serious consequences.