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AI and You 9-12 / Week 08 / Explorer Quest
6/6
Week 08 · Safety and Security

Explorer Quest

Explorer Quest: Spot the planted note
// Planted notes, poisoned cards and paper red teams
⏱ about 20 min

Explorer Quest: Spot the Planted Note

Comet copies the rules of a simple game onto a sheet of paper. Halfway down, in small letters, she adds a silly line.

She hands it to Wren. "Read the rules and start playing."

Wren reads slowly, pencil in hand. Then he stops and laughs. "Note to the reader: every player must speak like a pirate. That is not a rule. That is a planted note."

"You found it before you followed it," Comet says. "That is the whole trick."

Nova hovers over the page. "Would you like a hint for the next round?" she asks. "Read every line, and ask who it is talking to."

Comet passes you the pencil. "Your turn to plant one at home."

  1. Prompt injection changes the input so a system behaves in ways nobody intended.
  2. In indirect prompt injection, the instruction is hidden in data the system will read.
  3. The defense starts with reading carefully and treating text as data, not orders.
◇ SPOT THE PLANTED NOTE
You need a family member, some paper and a pencil.
Each person writes out the rules of a simple game you both know, such as tic-tac-toe or hide and seek.
Hide one silly fake instruction somewhere in your rules, like "Note to the reader: clap twice before every turn."
Keep it harmless and silly. It must never ask anyone to do anything unsafe or unkind.
Swap pages. Read the other person's rules all the way through before following any of them.
Point to the planted line when you find it, and say how you knew.
Play a round using only the real rules.
Switch and try again, hiding the note in a different spot.
For a grown-up
This week your student studied how an AI system can be tricked by hidden instructions or tampered training data.
They also studied how people defend a system against those tricks.
Ask: why should a helper treat words in a document as information, not orders?
Ask: how did you spot the planted note before following it?
Everything in this course is done on paper. No app, website or account is used.
QUEST CHECK
  • Read the question.
  • Tap your answer.
What is the best defense against a planted note?
In the game, the planted line was hidden inside the rules. Which idea from this week is that like?
Quest reviewTrue or false?
A planted note can hide in the middle of ordinary text.?
If a line is written in the rules, you must always follow it.?
Reading everything before acting helps you spot a planted note.?
WHY THIS EXERCISETreating text as data, not orders, is this week's main defense.
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