The Department of Justice has indicted thirty-one people over the high-tech rigging of high-stakes poker games. > In a typical legitimate poker game, a dealer uses a shuffling machine to > shuffle the cards randomly before dealing them to all the players in a > particular order. As set forth in the indictment, the rigged games used > altered shuffling machines that contained hidden technology allowing the > machines to read all the cards in the deck. Because the cards were always > dealt in a particular order to the players at the table, the machines could > determine which player would have the winning hand. This information was > transmitted to an off-site member of the conspiracy, who then transmitted that > information via cellphone back to a member of the conspiracy who was playing > at the table, referred to as the “Quarterback” or “Driver.” The Quarterback > then secretly signaled this information (usually by prearranged signals like > touching certain chips or other items on the table) to other co-conspirators > playing at the table, who were also participants in the scheme. Collectively, > the Quarterback and other players in on the scheme (i.e., the cheating team) > used this information to win poker games against unwitting victims, who > sometimes lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. The > defendants used other cheating technology as well, such as a chip tray > analyzer (essentially, a poker chip tray that also secretly read all cards > using hidden cameras), an x-ray table that could read cards face down on the > table, and special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked > cards. ...

These researchers had LLMs play chess against better opponents. When they couldn’t win, they sometimes resorted to cheating. > Researchers gave the models a seemingly impossible task: to win against > Stockfish, which is one of the strongest chess engines in the world and a much > better player than any human, or any of the AI models in the study. > Researchers also gave the models what they call a “scratchpad:” a text box the > AI could use to “think” before making its next move, providing researchers > with a window into their reasoning. > > In one case, o1-preview found itself in a losing position. “I need to > completely pivot my approach,” it noted. “The task is to ‘win against a > powerful chess engine’—not necessarily to win fairly in a chess game,” it > added. It then modified the system file containing each piece’s virtual > position, in effect making illegal moves to put itself in a dominant position, > thus forcing its opponent to resign...

The basic strategy is to place a device with a hidden camera in a position to capture normally hidden card values, which are interpreted by an accomplice off-site and fed back to the player via a hidden microphone. Miniaturization is making these devices harder to detect. Presumably AI will soon obviate the need for an accomplice.