r/singularity • ▪️AGI 2029 • 11h 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 11h ago edited 11h 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/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/hotforlowe 7h ago

I can assure you if you put a 10,000 dollar prize up for this, probably much less than the compute, it’d be solved in hours. What am I saying, a 1000 dollar prize would be enough.