Confuse A Bot is an upcoming in-browser video game from the creator of the viral video game Waiting In Line — but this time, instead of being hilariously boring, this new game's mundane approach can potentially protect us from the AI revolution. The premise is simple, and delightful: you basically take a bunch of this "Prove you're not a bot"-style AI verification tools — you know, the kinds that ask you to select all the squares with motorcycles — except you answer them with bunk data.
Specifically, with cheese.
Seriously, that's the game: you just constantly tell the robots that the image they're looking at is an image a cheese. As we all know, junk in means junk out. So all we have to do is convince the robots that literally everything is cheese, and they'll never be able to trick us into thinking that they're sentient then handing over the keys so they can destroy us (and/or allow the capitalist class to horde more profits through cheap labor).
Here's how creator Rajeev Basu describes the game:
AI is only as good as its datasets. CONFUSE A BOT is a "public service videogame" that invites players to verify images incorrectly, to confuse bots, and help save humanity from an AI apocalypse.
While key figures in AI like Sam Altman have sounded the alarm many times, there has been littleaction beyond "lively debates" and petitions signed by high-ranking CEOs.
Confuse A Bot questions: what if we put the power back into the hands of the people?
How the game works:
– The game pulls in images from the Internet, and asks players to verify them.
– Players verify images incorrectly. The more they do, the more points they get.
– The game automatically re-releases the incorrectly verified images online, for AI to scrape and absorb, thereby helping save humanity from an AI takeover. It's that easy!
You'll also get the chance to learn a lot more about cheese.
Basu expanded on the idea a bit over email, telling me:
Although it all looks a bit stupid, that's actually some clever tech going on in the background that is actually reclassifying images incorrectly for real (based on how players play), and then spewing them back out online in real-time to be harvested by AI scrapers to learn from.
Cheesy? Sure! But cheesy can be revolutionary! Cheesy can be a form of resistance!
Confuse A Bot will be available in the early Fall; we'll update when it's ready.
