Comment by paulgb
2 months ago
Wow, that's interesting! I wonder if this reproduces with a different message, or if it was a lucky guess.
I looked at how the strings tokenize and they do appear to conserve enough information that it could be decoded in theory.
> or if it was a lucky guess
It’s like guessing 1/2 or 2/3 on a math test. The test authors pick nice numbers, and programmers like ”hello”. If the way to encode the secret message resembles other encodings, it’s probably that the pattern matching monster picked it up and is struggling to autocomplete (ie backwards rationalize) a reason why.
I did some experimentation today. I wouldn't expect AI to solve it using only their own reasoning, but I've had a decent hit rate of getting AI to solve them when they have access to a Python interpreter. Here's Gemini Flash 2 solving one (albeit it lost the spaces) in a single prompt and about 7 seconds!
https://bsky.app/profile/paulbutler.org/post/3lhzhroogws2g