In all the other, less sci-fi inspired ways we’ve been focused on the world crumbling around us, we’ve taken our eye off of the true threat: the robot uprising. They know we’re not looking, and they’re seizing this critical moment to quietly advance—or someone just came up with a clever workaround for those CAPTCHAs that detect whether or not you’re human by your lack of machine-like precision and efficiency.
AI may still struggle with the Turing test, but at least computers can convince each other that they’re human, I guess.
CAPTCHAs, like pretty much every other variety of computer security, are always a matter of staying one step ahead of the opposition. These CAPTCHAs were always going to be broken—probably in still more sophisticated ways than this—at which point they’ll need to be redesigned in some way to detect the workaround, and that cycle will continue on pretty much forever.
Listen, all I’m saying is that some day, we’ll be faced with CAPTCHAs that lock us out if we’re not robots, after the machines have taken over. Good luck perfectly and mechanically clicking those tiny squares to get around the machines’ defenses. We’re going to need our own, good machines to help us fight back! No wait … I think that’s just a more mundane version of Terminator 2.
(via ViralViralVideos, image via screengrab)
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