Chatbots Convinced Idiots They Cracked the Code on a Sculpture in the CIA’s Backyard

Near the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, there is a sculpture known as Kryptos. It has been there since 1990 and contains four secret codes—three of which have been solved. The final one has gone 35 years without being decrypted. And, according to a report from Wired, the sculptor responsible wants everyone to know that you are not solving the damn thing with a chatbot. Jim Sanborn, who has created sculptures for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in addition to his work outside CIA HQ, has reportedly been inundated with people who are absolutely positive they’ve solved K4, the final panel of unsolved code that he encoded with knottier techniques. But these code crackers aren’t the actual cryptanalysts, professional or otherwise, who have been obsessed with decoding the message since it first appeared. No, these are just some people who ran the code through a chatbot and have taken its word on the answer. In a conv ... Read full article.