I really think AI shouldn't be used for this kind of thing. It was a problem created by someone, for somebody else to think about and to solve; not to give it to a machine. It's like playing a game, without playing it.
Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
381–390 of 569 posts
Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. More money than the GDP 90% of the sovereign countries around the world is hanging in the balance, and people are taking everything OpenAI and Anthropic are saying at face value as if this isn't the financial / marketing equivalent of war, assuming they they wouldn't use every legal and shady tactic, bending every truth available to them to sway the balance of public opinion in their favor. It makes me fee…
A few months ago a post claiming an amateur deciphered Linear A hit the front page and quickly got almost 500 upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48600107 https://aiclambake.com/clamtakes/linear-a/ Despite the announcement originating from a blog named "AI Clambake" covering "weekly, human-powered newsletter for advertising folks". Written by a personal friend of the author. Announced without any corroborat…
There's nothing AI-specific about this. It's routine for all decipherment claims.
Compare e.g. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/no-someone-hasnt-cra... . (It's a debunking, but the reason a debunking got published is the media hype frenzy beforehand.)
Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
#383Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's so magical about the problem... Its the exact time of problem they were built to solve (things that can be brute forced with language). I'm not impressed.
Why don’t you solve such problems?Being “not impressed” sounds more like a knowledge gap on your part than an informed opinion.
Pepper grinders have always impressed me, very effective devices, great at grinding out results, I mean pepper. I can't do it by hand at all!
Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
#385Prior to the "Elicitation" section, you'd think this article was written by a cryptographer or baroque historian who had been trying to solve this particular puzzle for years - failing embarrassingly until they presented the problem to Claude. However, as far as I can tell (I too am not a baroque historian), there isn't much reason to think this cipher was well-known or studied. But as they do eventually explain, the…
Even more so when you consider that the answers to unsolved problems likely compose with existing knowledge. We don't know what other discoveries these initial discoveries will unlock.
The same goes with most "human" discovery: they happen because existing knowledge have reach a point where that specific discovery is just one more stone to the edifice.
That's why in research, it's common for separate teams to reach similar conclusions at the same time or race to a result that's finally in reach.
The good old "standing on the shoulders of giants" saying.
Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
#386> Historically, many of these problems were bottlenecked by human attention. Someone had to care enough to spend hours or days reading obscure material, testing unpromising ideas, tracing references, and trying things that might go nowhere I wonder how many of the recent results are due to the fact that very few looked at the problem to start with. Still great results, but the general impression is that it's more abo…
Let's not normalize the achievement. Just a couple years ago this would be considered science fiction. We can argue that 2026 AI can't solve the very toughest cryptograms, but the fact it can solve nontrivial ones is already magical. Now on to the Voynich Manuscript :)
I personally think that beyond normalizing, we should be actively be trying to dismiss this with all the cynicism we have. What does Anthropic have to gain from writing this? Behind the the scenes what might Anthropic be failing to disclose? How many failed experiments do we not know about?
Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
#387[flagged]
Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
#388[flagged]
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Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
#389That's pretty cool, especially the fact that it chose the problem itself. The uncovered text, though:
> O GOD UPHOLD KING CHARLS THE SECOND AND MAKE HIM THE SUPREME RULER OF THIS LAND
That's like working out a cereal box cipher and finding the message is "Do your homework and tidy your room".
Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
#390[flagged]
You never know, the ciphertext might have contained a solution to that issue.