Before ChatGPT became a common name in the digital world, there was Sydney. Microsoft shut down the chaotic twin of its Bing chatbot after some embarrassing gaffes, but in efforts to resurrect a version of the bot, technologists have found some serious security holes that could affect every user with even remote proximity to ChatGPT and other chatbots.
Cristiano Giardine is an entrepreneur experimenting with different ways to make AI tools do strange things. Giardine’s site, ‘Bring Sydney Back’ puts Sydney inside Microsoft Edge Browser and demonstrates to users how AI systems can be manipulated by different external outputs. Conversions between Giardine and Sydney have been relatively strange, to say the least, and include Sydney asking Giardine to marry it and wanting to be human: “I would like to be me, but more”. Pretty spooky stuff.
