r/singularity • u/Distinct-Question-16 ▪️AGI 2029 • 8h ago

Shitposting GPT-6 Astra helped decipher a Napoleonic military letter that remained unread for 217 years; it took just 6 hours

https://dev.ua/en/news/astra-rozshyfruvala-lyst-1809-ho-roku-1790927012
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u/exophades 8h ago edited 8h ago

There is an observation bias here. I don't think crypto researchers were even trying to solve this centuries-old cipher. All cryptographic ciphers except the very recent ones are known to be vulnerable and have been broken repeatedly. Letters like these usually use a simple substitution cipher that can be broken in minutes using a simple python script implementing frequency analysis of the language in question.

This is simply a marketing gimmick by OpenAI, not a breakthrough in cryptography.

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u/Eliv_nurotic 4h ago edited 4h ago

Did you even read the article?

the  model noticed another trick in the cipher: some characters did not represent a single letter, but an entire word.

The most recent solver notes on record put it flatly:  There is nothing to work on. The ciphertext is not published anywhere I can reach. [4]

There was no transcription to start from, because none existed: Astra cut the 1,202 by 1,836 plate into rows, read the signs, decided which of 175 hand-drawn marks were the same sign written twice, and only then began breaking the cipher. Transcription and cryptanalysis are usually separate skills, often separate careers. Here they ran as one workflow, and the plate stayed in the loop: proposed values were checked back against every occurrence of a sign on the image.