situations

My colleagues and I changed a digital version of Monopoly so that instead of getting US$200 each time a player passes Go, the player is charged a wealth tax. We didn’t do this to gain an advantage or trick anyone. The purpose is to throw a curveball at artificial intelligence agents that play the game. Our aim is to help the agents learn to handle unexpected events, something AIs to date have been decidedly bad at. Giving AIs this kind of adaptability is important for futuristic systems like surgical robots, but also algorithms in the here and now that decide who should get bail, who should get approved for a credit card and whose resume gets through to a hiring manager. Not dealing well with the unexpected in any of those situations can have disastrous consequences. AI agents need the a...

When faced with a ransomware attack, a person or company or government agency finds its digital data encrypted by an unknown person, and then gets a demand for a ransom. As that type of digital hijacking has become more common in recent years, there have been two major ways people have chosen to respond: pay the ransom, which can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, or hire computer security consultants to recover the data independently. Those approaches are missing another option that we have identified in our cybersecurity policy studies. Police have a long history of successful crisis and hostage negotiation – experience that offers lessons that could be useful for people and organizations facing ransomware attacks. Understanding the problem In the first nine months of 2019, mo...

Tag: situations

To Teach AI How To Handle New Situations, Change The Rules Of The Game And Embrace The Unexpected

Deal with ransomware the way police deal with hostage situations