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Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

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Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#141
post #46

> The answer was simple in hindsight. It just kept looking until it found it—and that persistence might show up in many other areas. Sounds more like brute forcing than intelligence, this time.

I don't think it counts as brute forcing unless you're resorting to trying every possible solution. And clearly the LLM didn't do that here, because there would be near-infinite possible solutions.

I don't think we can really call "trying lots of different ideas for an extended period" "brute-forcing," unless we use that term for lots of humans who have struggled with hard math problems for years.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#142
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Astra told me yesterday: > The run baseline was captured without a physical MAC; the current device is not durably bound to it. > Engineering mode confirmation is the ESPHome component read-back; the LD2410 UART acknowledgement is not observed, so this is not proof the radar itself applied the sensitivity change. No clue what the fuck any of it means.

Reminds me a bit of VXJunkies

Have you tuned your Retro Encabulator recently?

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what Terence Tao said in one of his recent videos about it. That what the LLMs can provide is scale that humans can't. The example he provided is checking many possible solutions in a short amount of time because they can review all the previous literature and, for example, rule out ones with errors. He was realistic and practical about it and said that the tools working this way can be very helpful for a huma…

Do you have a link to that video?

Sorry, I don't remember. But I think it was in this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukpCHo5v-Gc

Though I believe the core of his opinion hasn't changed so any video would tell you a similar thing or at least that's how I understood it. That LLMs, in the hands of an "expert", can enhance the way you work. Which is very different and a lot more realistic to what the current AI companies are saying(or were saying before they toned it down a bit for their IPOs).

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#144
post #77
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Caveats, stated plainly" You should have seen the discussion of this on the Schneier blog a few days ago. Someone had their agent check the solution, presumably it emailed a librarian to check that it was correct for the original edition. Then their comments read like "The BL/EEBO witness lacks it, so the discrepancy is copy-specific, not a disproof of the cipher." and "A complete 285-coordinate physical replication…

Astra told me yesterday: > The run baseline was captured without a physical MAC; the current device is not durably bound to it. > Engineering mode confirmation is the ESPHome component read-back; the LD2410 UART acknowledgement is not observed, so this is not proof the radar itself applied the sensitivity change. No clue what the fuck any of it means.

The most surprising part, however, is that when one model slops this into a plan, another model somehow is able to interpret it correctly enough to produce code to spec.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an artifact of it not using A-Z as it's alphabet. What you type gets translated before the AI sees it. The seventeen word the AI sees does only contain three 'e' s.

Reading your comment, I asked it to count how many characters are in the word. It answered correctly: 9. It then also said it skipped an E in the prior chat and corrected it count to 4. It spun for 52 seconds so maybe some Python was involved.

> It spun for 52 seconds so maybe some Python was involved.

Come for the AI doom, stay for the programming languages (remember those?) catching strays

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#147

A very neat problem and result. I often find myself swinging between "It's so over" and "We're so back" - some days I roll out of bed thinking I could have Claude solve some random unproven OEIS sequence before breakfast; other days, I wake up in a cold sweat worried about the fate of humanity and what the world might look like in a decade. I think it's that I don't have a very high p(doom) or p(utopia), and I don't…

Baby shoes, never warn.

It is a threat. We need to run.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been for a decade now, it has nothing to do with AI. And you cant do nothing to avoid it today. This is the reality no one is telling you - the emission goals and global temperature ceilings are based on the fact that most prediction models become unstable with values above those limits; as in, we're probably royally fucked. You cant solve this with kumbaya politics (the problem is the CO2 is already in the pl…

Nobody wants to work for an AI, and nobody would elect one, and there is no math answer to how to choose who is forced to reduce growth (ie emissions), so really, "kumbaya" politics are the ONLY solution.

Well AI would simulate growth and spread of people from industrialisation and who benefitted most and allocate weights to countries and people based on the most complex criteria it can develop, it will have: 1. Cumulative emissions 2. Who utilised it most with specific lifestyles 3. Who is impacted worst and whether they heeded warnings.

Just a thought experiment, no one ever said the world was fair, and all history points to it

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#149

It's hard to believe that a model can nowadays solve mathematical challenges and break ciphers, yet it fails to do trivial tasks involving critical thinking, having taste, and not just running around in circles.

I disagreee big time.

You’re not really understanding how the tech works if you find it hard to comprehend.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what Terence Tao said in one of his recent videos about it. That what the LLMs can provide is scale that humans can't. The example he provided is checking many possible solutions in a short amount of time because they can review all the previous literature and, for example, rule out ones with errors. He was realistic and practical about it and said that the tools working this way can be very helpful for a huma…

But breadth first search combined with a good pruning/exploration heuristic has always been one of the field's (AI) main tools, so this certainly is not new.

Yes, I don't think it's new either. In fact, this illusion that machines are suddenly "thinking" or are "intelligent" is just coming from ignorance and/or falling for the current hype cycle.

I've been around for a few of these and I remember what was being said and written at the time. The after effect is very different to what was being predicted. Is it the same this time? Who knows. But the hype machine is at full power for this one.

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