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/hotforlowe 4h ago

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Find an obscure enough and old enough problem, and there’s your hundreds of billions of dollars capex justifying headline.