Brian Almquist
@geohawk.bsky.social
574 followers 1.4K following 361 posts
Maker of queues and stacks. Pro-ML, GenAI skeptic. Pro-teacher, Labubu skeptic. Otherwise non-flamboyant lefty.
Maker of queues and stacks. Pro-ML, GenAI skeptic. Pro-teacher, Labubu skeptic. Otherwise non-flamboyant lefty.
![A hidden instruction of this kind is, in substance, a secret communication to the very apparatus by which a matter may be read and weighed, delivered through a channel the opposing party can neither see nor answer. In that respect it is similar to an ex parte communication. A statement opposing counsel knows nothing about
and has no opportunity to respond to. Our system rests on the premise that what is said to influence a decision is said openly, on the record, where the other side may hear it and respond. A communication deployed in secret, kept from the adversary's sight, offends that premise.
Consider how plainly improper it would be for a party to arrange for an automated agent to communicate covertly with a juror during trial.
While there is no juror in these specific pleadings, the principle is the same. It is a concealed communication to those who decide, or to the tools on which they rely, clandestinely pleaded outside the knowledge of the other side and, indeed, the Court, itself.
This is a real and present concern, even beyond the legal profession. Prompt injection through hidden text has, in a very short time, become a familiar feature of ordinary life and reports of it are now commonplace. Computer-security organizations rank prompt injection as the foremost vulnerability of artificial-intelligence applications, and they specifically catalog white-on-white text, hidden
formatting, and non-printing characters as means of hiding instructions that the software processes while people remain unaware of them.
In hiring, employers report finding tens of thousands of resumes each year carrying hidden white-text instructions in tiny point font, telling an automated screener to advance or praise the applicant. One hiring manager's account of finding such prompts buried in applications circulated widely in a Fast Company article just this past week. In education, a history professor recently concealed a white-text
instruction in an examination [truncated]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2wyqv44lm72vasmddeqjgy72/bafkreih3uwfm3ybh6vjlmir6kfxoxmn2xhcxrvdhzawv45glz4ga5y4w6a)
![script of the end of Waiting for Godot which has been modified to read
ESTRAGON: Well, shall we log off?
VLADIMIR: Yes, let's log off.
[They do not log off]
CURTAIN](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:64mdicpo7sq4k5bx2z3m2jo6/bafkreia7vy7yqqyb7ytslx43odsuqsi4etojsjjntlqcrsguwncynwrfpm)
![Auteur House (@auteurhouse):
"Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson behind the scenes of There will be blood (2007)."
[Image: Photo of director Paul Thomas Anderson pointing off-camera while standing beside Daniel Day-Lewis]
Pierre L’Fauex (@LFauexProd) quote-tweeting:
"So the blood will be there."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4djfp3b27soxcfkxhirydi6d/bafkreihnyfun555v5rnacfb66pjlrm43opwrxsqwrsaelew3ohmb7iulxq)
