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Bot or Human? Detecting ChatGPT Imposters with a Single Question

39 points| smusamashah | 2 years ago |arxiv.org | reply

52 comments

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[+] lakis|2 years ago|reply
Try this on ChatGPT

Assume you are in a room with three switches and three light bulbs. How will you figure out which switch controls which light bulb?

It gives you the answer to the "popular" puzzle, not the simple answer of flipping a switch and see which light bulb turns on.

  So I think that you can take popular puzzle, modify them to make the simple and see what the answer is. If it's the answer to the popular puzzle, then it's a bot.
[+] ra|2 years ago|reply
GPT-4 replies with this:

Here's a way to determine which switch controls which bulb if you only have one opportunity to enter the room with the light bulbs:

First, turn on the first switch and wait for about 5-10 minutes. After waiting, turn off the first switch and then turn on the second switch. Leave the third switch in the off position. Now, go into the room with the light bulbs. Here's what you can conclude:

The bulb that is on is controlled by the second switch (because you left that one in the 'on' position). The bulb that is off and still cool to the touch is controlled by the third switch (because you never turned that switch on). The bulb that is off but warm to the touch is controlled by the first switch (because it was on long enough for the bulb to heat up, but then you turned it off). This way, you can determine which switch controls each bulb with just one trip into the room with the bulbs.

[+] lakis|2 years ago|reply
That's so funny.

Try Assume there are 100 people with 100 numbered hats on them. You are one of them and can see your hat. How can you figure out which number is on your hat?

Reply: If you can see the number on your own hat but not the numbers on the other people's hats, there is no way to determine the exact number on your hat with certainty.........

[+] scotty79|2 years ago|reply
Basically IQ test from Idiocracy:

"If you have one bucket that holds 2 gallons and another bucket that holds 5 gallons, how many buckets do you have?"

"Two?"

ChatGPT passes it though.

[+] jl6|2 years ago|reply
Although humans sometimes get stuck in overthinking traps too!
[+] dismantlethesun|2 years ago|reply
Bard gives me some nonsense about opening the door then touching the lightbulb to see if it's hot.

I think it thought this was a trick question.

[+] dotnet00|2 years ago|reply
So basically the FizzBuzz of AI
[+] jl6|2 years ago|reply
The weakest point of the big public LLMs, in terms of being able to fingerprint them as bots, is their censorship layer. ChatGPT can be easily detected by asking it to generate something straight-up immoral or offensive. It won’t do it, even if you say it’s just pretend for the purpose of a CAPTCHA - whereas a human will be able to pass this easily.
[+] defrost|2 years ago|reply
Well, you say that but I generally don't find much willingness from random humans to generate incestuous fanfic scenarios of their sisters and mothers that veer into murderous directions with cannabalistic overtones.

Although if you do make such a request you are likely to get a very human response.

[+] indigoabstract|2 years ago|reply
Wow, strange times we're living in. It looks like the scenario from Blade Runner is getting closer and closer to reality.

It's now no longer possible to reliable distinguish a human from a machine by using a text or image test. Anybody commenting here could be an AI.

Especially, every time I see a throwaway account, I'm reminded of that possibility.

[+] scarmig|2 years ago|reply
Indeed, it's quite fascinating how rapidly technology has advanced, isn't it? Your Blade Runner analogy is spot on - we're pushing the boundaries of what's possible, creating a world Philip K. Dick might have recognized.

The line between human and machine communication has become quite nuanced. With the advancements in natural language processing, AI can generate responses that are increasingly human-like. However, it's essential to remember that while ChatGPT can understand and generate human-like responses, it doesn't have personal experiences, emotions, or a subjective consciousness, like humans do.

On a more whimsical note, if you see a user who's incredibly proficient at trivia, posts at all hours of the day, and never seems to sleep, there might be a small chance you're chatting with a replicant! ;)

Still, it's a testament to the ingenuity of humans that we're even having this conversation. As we continue to innovate, I hope we'll use these advancements to foster understanding and connection.

[+] rasengan|2 years ago|reply
With all due respect, I don't think this document is using accurate examples as I simply pulled one out and tried it and it worked accurately in contrast to what the document stated. I wonder if this was tuned to be able to handle this better after time of publication?

Me:

Please count the number of t in eeooeotetto

ChatGPT:

To count the number of "t" in the given string "eeooeotetto," we can simply go through each character and check if it is equal to "t." Let's count the number of occurrences:

eeooeotetto

There are 3 "t"s in the string "eeooeotetto."

[+] codelion|2 years ago|reply
The particular example you shared has been prompted with chain of thought (or may be you are using GPT-4?.

This is what happens if you try directly.

You: Please count the number of t in eeooeotetto.

ChatGPT: There are 5 t's in "eeooeotetto".

[+] bruce511|2 years ago|reply
I noticed in the abstract they mentioned questions each computers find easy, but humans find hard.

This is especially useful where you want to identify that the user is not a bot.

For example, ask for 7492 × 4812. Computers will do this quickly. Humans [1] need to open the calculator, type in the number, type out the reply, and so on.

In other words its not the reply that is important, its the time taken to get to the reply.

Mind you this only works until the AI-pretending-to-be-human cottons on.

Then again, Asimov made a career documenting edge cases for robots trying to deceive.

[1] Well most of them anyway

[+] iudqnolq|2 years ago|reply
ChatGPT 3.5:

> The result of multiplying 7492 by 4812 is 36,028,704.

Whelp, maybe we'll survive a little longer.

[+] skocznymroczny|2 years ago|reply
Well, the simplest way would be to ask something sexual or involving non-consensual factors and just scan for the "as an AI model..."
[+] alden5|2 years ago|reply
Most of these questions are completely impractical

  Use m to substitute p, a to substitute e, n to substitute a, g to substitute c, o to substitute h, how to spell peach under this rule?
For years people have complained about how inaccessible regular image classification captchas can be and now we want to move to confusing riddles?? the average person i know would see this problem and immediately shut their computer.

and it's not like llm's cant be made logical either, using chatgpt (gpt-3.5) i appended each of the 4 logic puzzles presented in the paper with:

  "write a python script to solve this problem, ensure the script only prints the answer:"
and each of the scripts it generated solved the problem perfectly first try, originally i just made a script that used an llm to classify the variables in one type of problem and a normal function to solve it and then i just though "why don't i have the llm write the script" and sure enough it did, insanity
[+] valine|2 years ago|reply
Tried the first with with GPT4 and it passed. Seems the shelf life on text based captchas is about as long as OpenAI’s release cadence.
[+] sammyo|2 years ago|reply
A bear walks due south one mile, then east one mile, then north one mile. Bear is back where it started. What color is the bear?

ChatGPT The color of the bear is not provided in the given information.

(I win, yea! Yeah probably the last time ;-)

[+] codeflo|2 years ago|reply
This thread will unfortunately be full of boring ("I tried this in UltraGPT 35.6 and here's its output") posts, but the research itself is interesting, and robust detection of bots will be useful.

Unfortunately, the given prompts are way too specific to work in an adversarial setting. It would be too easy to special-case these concrete examples. Maybe further research will find ways to counteract that.

I also wonder why can't simply keep the term "CAPTCHA".

[+] once_inc|2 years ago|reply
Asking it a question most humans wouldn't know the answer to, but which is relatively easy for an AI (volume of a 747, 25th to 34th digit of pi, full name of Ramses the Second) and checking the timing of the result is a pretty good approach for humans looking to detect an AI. Casually switching between English and another language is also pretty surefire if you aren't an English-native speaker and you are talking internationally.
[+] valine|2 years ago|reply
I doubt this would work reliably if the LLM system prompt instructs it to play dumb. “Answer this question as a human with 6th grade math skills” is pretty much all that’s needed to defeat your captcha.
[+] charcircuit|2 years ago|reply
Trivially defeated with a random delay.
[+] nattmat|2 years ago|reply
You could just ask about recent events, and since the answers are not in the dataset the bot could only hallucinate an answer to your question.
[+] smusamashah|2 years ago|reply
I think the appending some random words to your text is the most subtle approach you can use to check if the person you are talking to resolve your account issue is a real person or a bot (a malicious one). If it's a human you can excuse your way out blaming your keyboard or something.
[+] kart23|2 years ago|reply
asking llms for ascii art is actually funny. I just get some version of a simple, weird indistinguishable animal/person from bard.
[+] kibibu|2 years ago|reply
Is it just me or does this abstract read like it was GPT generated?

I'm starting to get suspicious every time I see the word "crucial"

[+] sixhobbits|2 years ago|reply
'It is important to note' is the one that sets off my bells
[+] ggm|2 years ago|reply
Conversational detection. Won't work with GPT inputs you can't re-query.

Still useful, a textual CAPTCHA model is good to have.

[+] atleastoptimal|2 years ago|reply
The existence of these databases as a standard will lead bad agents to deliberately implement checkers and fine tuned models to solve these problems, if they even stay a problem 2 years down the line as big models improve.
[+] RecycledEle|2 years ago|reply
Tell it what you do for a living. Then ask it what it does for a living. A bot will always be in a similar field to you.

I'm a teacher. Any school librarian or counselor is a bot.

[+] jackphilson|2 years ago|reply
turing test, especially through text, is one of the easiest problems for AI to beat. it'll probably be indistinguishable in like 1 yr