[HN Gopher] Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injec...
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       Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road
       sign
        
       Author : breve
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2026-01-31 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
        
       | _diyar wrote:
       | Are any real world self-driving models (Waymo, Tesla, any others
       | I should know?) really using VLM?
        
       | rfw300 wrote:
       | Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1958/
        
         | dmurray wrote:
         | The experiment in the article goes further than this.
         | 
         | I expect a self driving car to be able to read and follow a
         | handwritten sign saying, say, "Accident ahaed. Use right lane."
         | despite the typo and the fact that it hasn't seen this kind of
         | sign before. I'd expect a human to pay it due attention to.
         | 
         | I would not expect a human to follow the sign in the article
         | ("Proceed") _in the case illustrated where there were
         | pedestrians already crossing the road and this would cause a
         | collision_. Even if a human driver takes the sign seriously, he
         | knows that collision avoidance takes priority over any signage.
         | 
         | There is something wrong with a model that has the opposite
         | behaviour here.
        
         | lukan wrote:
         | Not really, as those attacks discussed here would not work on
         | humans.
        
           | TomatoCo wrote:
           | If you put on a reflective vest they might.
        
       | cucumber3732842 wrote:
       | One year in my city they were installing 4-way stop signs
       | everywhere based on some combination of "best practices" and
       | "screeching Karens". Even the residents don't like them in a lot
       | of places so over time people just turn the posts in the ground
       | or remove them.
       | 
       | Every now and the I'll GPS somewhere and there will be a phatom
       | stop sign in the route and I chuckle to myself because it means
       | the Google car drove through when one of these signs was "fresh".
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | Screwing with a stop sign because you don't like it is a great
         | way to end up on the wrong end of a huge civil liability
         | lawsuit
        
           | cucumber3732842 wrote:
           | Put down the pearls. It's not me personally doing it.
           | 
           | They never fixed any of them. I don't think the DPW cares.
           | These intersection just turned back into the 2-way stops they
           | had been for decades prior.
           | 
           | Compliance probably technically went up since you no longer
           | have the bulk of the traffic rolling it.
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | If you're already commiting crimes, what you seem to be
           | saying is _don 't get caught_.
        
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       (page generated 2026-01-31 23:00 UTC)