5 ms·

AI Thinks It Cracked Kryptos. The Artist Behind It Says No Chance

48 points by guax 2y ago

teddyh 2y ago
[flagged]
- minitech 2y ago
  Full quote, showing that this is something the artist in question is talking about: > Sanborn, a climate-conscious friend of the Earth who lives on a small island on the Chesapeake Bay, is also appalled by the amount of energy that it takes to produce generative AI, and AI’s fabricated answers. Adding to the annoyance is that some of the would-be codebreakers are touting their collaboration with Grok 3, which is made by Elon Musk’s xAI. The same Musk who, despite good deeds with Tesla, now works for an administration determined to reverse any progress on mitigating climate change. “That’s a little twist of the ice pick,” he says. Nothing “stealth” or “ad copy” about it.
  - teddyh 2y ago
    The sentence I quoted is not presented as an opinion of the artist, or even of the article author; it is presented as an incontrovertible fact. As an opinion of the artist, it would have had at best a very slight relevance. However, presented as pure fact, it is irrelevant at best and seems suspicious.
- wahnfrieden 2y ago
  It's annoying to read surface level critiques that skim articles for Musk denigration or wokeisms and pull them out of their context and misrepresent their point to clown on the author
jampekka 2y ago
https://archive.is/20250307221215/https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-kryptos-code-artificial-intelligence/ https://archive.is/20250307221215/https://www.wired.com/stor...
spacecadet 2y ago
As an artist, I would just setup a small/local AI to auto respond to the bullshit emails and sit back and collect the $50. That would be art in itself.
- RajT88 2y ago
  Sign the response as Banksy while you are at it.
elicksaur 2y ago
When I read stories about people 10x’ing their productivity with AI, I interpret them as having the same vibe as these “solvers”.
- vultour 2y ago
  I think the dystopian Apple Intelligence commercials summed it up perfectly. It sure was a 10x improvement when AI generated the email for that lazy bum, but anyone who’s already bringing value will never see anywhere near those numbers.
  - sejje 2y ago
    On what timeline?
    - tejohnso 2y ago
      "never"
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  On the other hand, this mentality can keep you from figuring out how to use AI as a tool that works for you. You should speak to people who are using it productively since most of the time its work is verifiable.
  - swatcoder 2y ago
    Discussions with the "people who are using it productively" happen all the time here on HN and among our colleages in real life. It's not like you can escape it. But those discussions don't crest the hill because the "verified" work consistently either fails to be addressing a challenge that the skeptics encounter or has qualities that the skeptics can't imagine themselves possessing. The reality is that we all approach our work differently and all carry different standards in what we accept in the work we produce. It's clear that generative AI genuinely helps some people improve their work or ease their burden of producing it, but it should also be clear at this point that the people it doesn't seem to help are not being failed for lack of having learned about its use cases. We're 2+ years in and are saturated with the hype and with such examples. It's just not as universally useful as some people (for whatever reason) want to believe.
trescenzi 2y ago
This is one of the more major risks of chatbot style generative AI. People are very open to well argued answers to problems even if the answer is wrong. I was reading this article about how those with less educational attainment seem to use chatbots more[1]. On one hand this is amazing because it increases access to good enough writing and information. On the other hand it raises the chances that people, regardless of educational attainment, are convinced that falsehoods are true. 1: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/researchers-surprised-to-find-less-educated-areas-adopting-ai-writing-tools-faster/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/researchers-surprised-to-...
- roenxi 2y ago
  It raises an interesting theoretical problem. If the AI comes up with a good argument that translates a coded message into something legible can it truly be said to be wrong? It'd be more of a flaw in the art installation. The problem with asking people to interpret gobbledegook is that it might map to English in any number of ways.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  LLMs are literally truth-sounding machines. Which isn't to diminish their utility, but is to say it's smart to treat them like used car salesmen. Maybe they're telling a true-sounding truth... or maybe it's just true-sounding.
  - trescenzi 2y ago
    Right their purpose is to produce bullshit in the most technical sense[1]. There is no concern for the actual truth, just that the output sounds good. Edit: That’s not to discount the value of said bullshit or to say they are never correct. Simply that correctness isn’t what they are optimized for. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
  - timbit42 2y ago
    The need to add an inference engine to them for fact checking.
IshKebab 2y ago
> And Sanborn is getting ticked off ... > Some years ago, Sanborn began charging $50 to review solutions, providing a speed bump to filter out wild guesses and nut cases. Yeah I suspect he isn't that ticked off. I'm happy to take over reviewing solutions if he likes!
bell-cot 2y ago
But it feels SO good to believe that you (with your AI sidekick) are some sort of uber-awesome genius! Especially when the downsides of being wrong are nill.
- haswell 2y ago
  > Especially when the downsides of being wrong are nill. The question is: are the downsides of being wrong because of an LLM actually nil? While this is a story of a harmless contest, I think it represents something much bigger and perhaps far less harmless.
- mcphage 2y ago
  What if the downside of being wrong is $50?
Xcelerate 2y ago
> Some years ago, Sanborn began charging $50 to review solutions, providing a speed bump to filter out wild guesses and nut cases Oh man, oh man, this just gave me a great startup idea. What is the total addressable market of nutcases willing to pay $50 or more to have someone check whether they have cracked some difficult code? Perhaps even with a giant prize attached for cracking it?
- solardev 2y ago
  Sounds like the NYT word game subscriptions
- mcphage 2y ago
  Even better: create an unbreakable code (one with no actual solution, but with a fake solution). Give people a few years to attempt to solve it, while you acquire stock in one of the smaller AI companies. Then give someone the fake solution, have them announce to the world that they solved your code with the help of the AI software you’ve invested in. Rise the wave, then sell it before everyone figures out the ruse.
chiph 2y ago
If you'd like to see a similar work by Jim Sanborn, Cyrillic Projector is at the University of North Carolina Charlotte behind the Fretwell Building. Way easier to see in person than CIA headquarters! It has a light inside and if you visit at night, the reverse-cut lettering will be readable on the walkway around it. https://maps.app.goo.gl/tFbx6kBkMgSMDGGY8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/tFbx6kBkMgSMDGGY8
picafrost 2y ago
I am reminded of a brief quip in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age where a character comments on remembering a time before "AI" had been correctly rebranded to "PI": pseudo-intelligence. The valuation-perception-driven hyperbole around these Dunning-Kruger machines does not help the average person trying to bat above their level.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
haswell 2y ago
This story summarizes one of my biggest concerns/frustrations with the rise of these LLM tools. The confident incorrectness they breed is a problem. The impact in online social spaces is already increasingly obvious.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  > The confident incorrectness they breed is a problem. Looking at America here in 2025, it sure seems like the confidently incorrect are confidently and successfully convincing the submorons that they are correct, despite their both being incorrect. I sure seems like a kind of tensegrity of willful ignorances. But definitely there are a shitton of folks that are both far too stupid to know how stupid they are, while also being way too overconfident that they're smarter than the actual smart folks. Dunning-Kruger really exposed the majorities. And there's that quote about change only coming when the old generation dies out; not because they willingly learned and humbly levelled themselves up.
snowwrestler 2y ago
I love entertaining the possibility that the 4th panel of Kryptos is not actually solvable, and that everyone is spending tons of time and energy trying to know secret information has no practical use, and doesn’t even exist. I feel like that would be a strong artistic statement about the CIA and intelligence agencies in general. Do people reluctantly work to know every secret because it’s actually necessary for security? Or do some people just want to know every secret, and “security” is the handiest excuse for them to pursue that?
kewho 2y ago
> What took 35 years and even the NSA with all their resources could not do I was able to do in only 3 hours before I even had my morning coffee,” it began, before the writer showed Sanborn what they believed to be the cosmically elusive solution. “History’s rewritten,” wrote the submitter. “no errors 100% cracked.” I liked the snark from gizmodos report: > > The smugness is, frankly, inexplicable. Even if they did successfully crack Sanborn’s code using AI (which, for the record, Sanborn says they haven’t even gotten close), what is it about asking a machine to do the work for you that generates such self-satisfaction? Hear, hear. https://gizmodo.com/chatbots-have-convinced-idiots-that-they-cracked-the-code-on-a-mysterious-sculpture-in-the-cias-backyard-2000573216 https://gizmodo.com/chatbots-have-convinced-idiots-that-they...
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  We live among idiots, my friend. And a shitton of them are right here on HN, and with damn high karma because there's nothing an idiot loves more than another idiot to validate their idiocy. And they always go Yosemite Sam on anyone who explains exactly what kind of stupid they are. What they lack in intelligence, however, they MORE than make up for in confidence. "Same as it ever was." --Talking Heads
  - TMWNN 2y ago
    I don't disagree that your comment applies to HN, but it applies to Reddit 100X more (in terms of both width and depth).
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
      I don't doubt that that's true, but my surfing there has been effectively nonexistent, so I know that I don't know. I'd hazard a guess, however, that there is a great deal of variance between different subreddits.

48 points by guax 2y ago

teddyh 2y ago

[flagged]

minitech 2y ago
Full quote, showing that this is something the artist in question is talking about: > Sanborn, a climate-conscious friend of the Earth who lives on a small island on the Chesapeake Bay, is also appalled by the amount of energy that it takes to produce generative AI, and AI’s fabricated answers. Adding to the annoyance is that some of the would-be codebreakers are touting their collaboration with Grok 3, which is made by Elon Musk’s xAI. The same Musk who, despite good deeds with Tesla, now works for an administration determined to reverse any progress on mitigating climate change. “That’s a little twist of the ice pick,” he says. Nothing “stealth” or “ad copy” about it.
- teddyh 2y ago
  The sentence I quoted is not presented as an opinion of the artist, or even of the article author; it is presented as an incontrovertible fact. As an opinion of the artist, it would have had at best a very slight relevance. However, presented as pure fact, it is irrelevant at best and seems suspicious.
wahnfrieden 2y ago
It's annoying to read surface level critiques that skim articles for Musk denigration or wokeisms and pull them out of their context and misrepresent their point to clown on the author

jampekka 2y ago

https://archive.is/20250307221215/https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-kryptos-code-artificial-intelligence/ https://archive.is/20250307221215/https://www.wired.com/stor...

spacecadet 2y ago

As an artist, I would just setup a small/local AI to auto respond to the bullshit emails and sit back and collect the $50. That would be art in itself.

RajT88 2y ago
Sign the response as Banksy while you are at it.

elicksaur 2y ago

When I read stories about people 10x’ing their productivity with AI, I interpret them as having the same vibe as these “solvers”.

vultour 2y ago
I think the dystopian Apple Intelligence commercials summed it up perfectly. It sure was a 10x improvement when AI generated the email for that lazy bum, but anyone who’s already bringing value will never see anywhere near those numbers.
- sejje 2y ago
  On what timeline?
  - tejohnso 2y ago
    "never"
hombre_fatal 2y ago
On the other hand, this mentality can keep you from figuring out how to use AI as a tool that works for you. You should speak to people who are using it productively since most of the time its work is verifiable.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  Discussions with the "people who are using it productively" happen all the time here on HN and among our colleages in real life. It's not like you can escape it. But those discussions don't crest the hill because the "verified" work consistently either fails to be addressing a challenge that the skeptics encounter or has qualities that the skeptics can't imagine themselves possessing. The reality is that we all approach our work differently and all carry different standards in what we accept in the work we produce. It's clear that generative AI genuinely helps some people improve their work or ease their burden of producing it, but it should also be clear at this point that the people it doesn't seem to help are not being failed for lack of having learned about its use cases. We're 2+ years in and are saturated with the hype and with such examples. It's just not as universally useful as some people (for whatever reason) want to believe.

trescenzi 2y ago

This is one of the more major risks of chatbot style generative AI. People are very open to well argued answers to problems even if the answer is wrong. I was reading this article about how those with less educational attainment seem to use chatbots more[1]. On one hand this is amazing because it increases access to good enough writing and information. On the other hand it raises the chances that people, regardless of educational attainment, are convinced that falsehoods are true. 1: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/researchers-surprised-to-find-less-educated-areas-adopting-ai-writing-tools-faster/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/researchers-surprised-to-...

roenxi 2y ago
It raises an interesting theoretical problem. If the AI comes up with a good argument that translates a coded message into something legible can it truly be said to be wrong? It'd be more of a flaw in the art installation. The problem with asking people to interpret gobbledegook is that it might map to English in any number of ways.
ethbr1 2y ago
LLMs are literally truth-sounding machines. Which isn't to diminish their utility, but is to say it's smart to treat them like used car salesmen. Maybe they're telling a true-sounding truth... or maybe it's just true-sounding.
- trescenzi 2y ago
  Right their purpose is to produce bullshit in the most technical sense[1]. There is no concern for the actual truth, just that the output sounds good. Edit: That’s not to discount the value of said bullshit or to say they are never correct. Simply that correctness isn’t what they are optimized for. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
- timbit42 2y ago
  The need to add an inference engine to them for fact checking.

IshKebab 2y ago

> And Sanborn is getting ticked off ... > Some years ago, Sanborn began charging $50 to review solutions, providing a speed bump to filter out wild guesses and nut cases. Yeah I suspect he isn't that ticked off. I'm happy to take over reviewing solutions if he likes!

bell-cot 2y ago

But it feels SO good to believe that you (with your AI sidekick) are some sort of uber-awesome genius! Especially when the downsides of being wrong are nill.

haswell 2y ago
> Especially when the downsides of being wrong are nill. The question is: are the downsides of being wrong because of an LLM actually nil? While this is a story of a harmless contest, I think it represents something much bigger and perhaps far less harmless.
mcphage 2y ago
What if the downside of being wrong is $50?

Xcelerate 2y ago

> Some years ago, Sanborn began charging $50 to review solutions, providing a speed bump to filter out wild guesses and nut cases Oh man, oh man, this just gave me a great startup idea. What is the total addressable market of nutcases willing to pay $50 or more to have someone check whether they have cracked some difficult code? Perhaps even with a giant prize attached for cracking it?

solardev 2y ago
Sounds like the NYT word game subscriptions
mcphage 2y ago
Even better: create an unbreakable code (one with no actual solution, but with a fake solution). Give people a few years to attempt to solve it, while you acquire stock in one of the smaller AI companies. Then give someone the fake solution, have them announce to the world that they solved your code with the help of the AI software you’ve invested in. Rise the wave, then sell it before everyone figures out the ruse.

chiph 2y ago

If you'd like to see a similar work by Jim Sanborn, Cyrillic Projector is at the University of North Carolina Charlotte behind the Fretwell Building. Way easier to see in person than CIA headquarters! It has a light inside and if you visit at night, the reverse-cut lettering will be readable on the walkway around it. https://maps.app.goo.gl/tFbx6kBkMgSMDGGY8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/tFbx6kBkMgSMDGGY8

picafrost 2y ago

I am reminded of a brief quip in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age where a character comments on remembering a time before "AI" had been correctly rebranded to "PI": pseudo-intelligence. The valuation-perception-driven hyperbole around these Dunning-Kruger machines does not help the average person trying to bat above their level.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

haswell 2y ago

This story summarizes one of my biggest concerns/frustrations with the rise of these LLM tools. The confident incorrectness they breed is a problem. The impact in online social spaces is already increasingly obvious.

MrMcCall 2y ago
> The confident incorrectness they breed is a problem. Looking at America here in 2025, it sure seems like the confidently incorrect are confidently and successfully convincing the submorons that they are correct, despite their both being incorrect. I sure seems like a kind of tensegrity of willful ignorances. But definitely there are a shitton of folks that are both far too stupid to know how stupid they are, while also being way too overconfident that they're smarter than the actual smart folks. Dunning-Kruger really exposed the majorities. And there's that quote about change only coming when the old generation dies out; not because they willingly learned and humbly levelled themselves up.

snowwrestler 2y ago

I love entertaining the possibility that the 4th panel of Kryptos is not actually solvable, and that everyone is spending tons of time and energy trying to know secret information has no practical use, and doesn’t even exist. I feel like that would be a strong artistic statement about the CIA and intelligence agencies in general. Do people reluctantly work to know every secret because it’s actually necessary for security? Or do some people just want to know every secret, and “security” is the handiest excuse for them to pursue that?

kewho 2y ago

> What took 35 years and even the NSA with all their resources could not do I was able to do in only 3 hours before I even had my morning coffee,” it began, before the writer showed Sanborn what they believed to be the cosmically elusive solution. “History’s rewritten,” wrote the submitter. “no errors 100% cracked.” I liked the snark from gizmodos report: > > The smugness is, frankly, inexplicable. Even if they did successfully crack Sanborn’s code using AI (which, for the record, Sanborn says they haven’t even gotten close), what is it about asking a machine to do the work for you that generates such self-satisfaction? Hear, hear. https://gizmodo.com/chatbots-have-convinced-idiots-that-they-cracked-the-code-on-a-mysterious-sculpture-in-the-cias-backyard-2000573216 https://gizmodo.com/chatbots-have-convinced-idiots-that-they...

MrMcCall 2y ago
We live among idiots, my friend. And a shitton of them are right here on HN, and with damn high karma because there's nothing an idiot loves more than another idiot to validate their idiocy. And they always go Yosemite Sam on anyone who explains exactly what kind of stupid they are. What they lack in intelligence, however, they MORE than make up for in confidence. "Same as it ever was." --Talking Heads
- TMWNN 2y ago
  I don't disagree that your comment applies to HN, but it applies to Reddit 100X more (in terms of both width and depth).
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    I don't doubt that that's true, but my surfing there has been effectively nonexistent, so I know that I don't know. I'd hazard a guess, however, that there is a great deal of variance between different subreddits.