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Ahead of the game.

I'm Bob Karson with the Discovery Files, from the National Science Foundation.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are helping to shape a world of (Sound effect: car drives by) autonomous vehicles, (Sound effect: heartbeat) superior medical diagnostics -- a whole assortment of emerging technologies. (Sound effect: robotic arm sound) They may be smart machines, but they can still fall victim to smart attacks.

Engineers at Princeton have found all that learning ability leaves systems vulnerable to hackers in unexpected ways. They've done some experimental hacking of their own -- invading -- e'-vading doing a little data poisoning.

The team was able to cause a car's AI to perceive a speed limit sign as a stop sign. (Sound effect: tire screech) Same with a fake restaurant sign, through tiny modifications people might not even notice.

Seems attacks could cause AI systems to produce unintended and even dangerous outcomes by corrupting the learning process.

The research found that hackers could attack by inserting bogus information into the stream of data a system is using to learn. Or manipulating the inputs the system receives once it starts applying its learning to real-world decisions. Or connecting the dots to identify private personal details.

The researchers say we're just at the starting point for securing machine learning.

Artificial intelligence -- real vulnerabilities.

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