Scientists figured out how to 'brainwash' a logical AI, tricking it into agreeing with whatever answer they wanted from the start.
March 20, 2026
Original Paper
Schrödinger Bridges via the Hacking of Bayesian Priors in Classical and Quantum Regimes
arXiv · 2603.18665
The Takeaway
This study explores how 'Bayesian logic'—the gold standard for rational thinking—can be reverse-engineered. By carefully engineering the starting assumptions, an observer can force a target to reach a specific belief while the target remains mathematically convinced they are thinking entirely for themselves.
From the abstract
Bayes' rule is widely regarded as the canonical prescription for belief updating. We show, however, that one can arbitrarily preserve pre-specified beliefs while appearing to perform Bayesian updates via "prior hacking": engineering a reference prior distribution such that, for a fixed channel and evidence, the update matches a chosen target distribution. We prove that this is generically possible in both classical and quantum settings whenever Bayesian inversions are well-defined (with the Petz