Agents just eat these things. After last week's HN post about Cyphral Distich, I pointed Astra and Fable at some unsolved ciphers just to see whether some joker who knew nothing about the field could get the same results, and sure enough there's plenty of low hanging fruit.
They are low hanging fruit. This is the sort of thing it ought to be good at, and it's not particularly surprising that it is. But it is also not what is being promoted by LLM advocates on the public stage.
Investors are not putting billions into OpenAI to crack historical ciphertexts. This is supposedly a trillion dollar general purpose artificial intelligence, but still can't reliably tell me how many p's are in 'raspberry'.
Cracking pre-computer era ciphers with LLMs is like me claiming I have a super-efficient hypersonic precooled hybrid air-breathing rocket engine that will revolutionize all forms of transportation, and then for a demo bragging about how nicely I can grill with it at my backyard BBQ.
Sam Altman in July: "We are in the singularity"[3]
Anthropic's alignment lead two weeks ago: "What I am worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement"[2]
The media, last week: "AI could kill all humans in next decade, warn experts"[3]
Meanwhile, the topic of this thread is how ChatGPT decoded a century-old ciphertext using a known method and a published key. :-| One of these four items is not in the same ballpark as the others.
If you define "LLM Advocates" as Sam, Dario, and the mainstream media outlets that they are directly feeding their propaganda to, sure, your 3 examples are an exhaustive list and this is all that happens.
aaymeloglu · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://aaymeloglu.github.io/unsolved-ciphers/" rel="nofollow">https://aaymeloglu.github.io/unsolved-ciphers/
But I got nothing on Daniel Bordeau, who in the past week seems to have built himself a whole code breaking factory!
<a href="https://dbourdeau.github.io/cyphersolver/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://dbourdeau.github.io/cyphersolver/index.html
greenavocado · · focus · HN ↗
GolfPopper · · focus · HN ↗
Investors are not putting billions into OpenAI to crack historical ciphertexts. This is supposedly a trillion dollar general purpose artificial intelligence, but still can't reliably tell me how many p's are in 'raspberry'.
Cracking pre-computer era ciphers with LLMs is like me claiming I have a super-efficient hypersonic precooled hybrid air-breathing rocket engine that will revolutionize all forms of transportation, and then for a demo bragging about how nicely I can grill with it at my backyard BBQ.
phoghed · · focus · HN ↗
It quite literally is. Right here, right now. It’s happening before your eyes, you’re actively engaging with it.
GolfPopper · · focus · HN ↗
Anthropic's alignment lead two weeks ago: "What I am worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement"[2]
The media, last week: "AI could kill all humans in next decade, warn experts"[3]
Meanwhile, the topic of this thread is how ChatGPT decoded a century-old ciphertext using a known method and a published key. :-| One of these four items is not in the same ballpark as the others.
1. <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-says-we-are-in-the-singularity-this-is-the-moment/ar-AA28IOaI" rel="nofollow">https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence...
2. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/11/anthropic-openai-ai-existential-concerns.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/11/anthropic-openai-ai-existent...
3. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/09/ai-superintelligence-risks-warnings-scientists-politicians" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/09/ai-superi...
phoghed · · focus · HN ↗