'Mixed feelings': AI cracks centuries-old ciphers
Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the wartime missive written in code, creating a puzzle that went unsolved for more than 200 years -- until AI cracked it in a matter of hours. Tomokiyo said that since mid-September, most of the ciphers on his list have been cracked using AI. "There remain some tough problems" which could stay an enigma for years to come, because there is less relevant data available to…
Napoleon Bonaparte's wartime message, written in code over 200 years ago, has finally been cracked thanks to artificial intelligence. The AI engineer Carter Church used OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model to decode the 19th-century letter to one of Napoleon's generals in just six hours, a task that could have taken weeks using traditional methods.
Church describes the experience as a "sense of satisfaction and excitement," highlighting AI's ability to persistently tackle complex problems. The decrypted message, detailing French and allied troops' positions, had been ignored in an online academic archive. Church emphasizes that historians have more pressing matters to address, leaving many ciphers unattended for too long.
Researchers are increasingly turning to AI to tackle historical ciphers, with the public release of powerful tools sparking a surge in new solutions. Despite this, some ciphers remain unsolved due to a lack of relevant data. Tomokiyo, a Japanese patent engineer, notes that while AI has solved many difficult problems, it also raises mixed feelings as human achievement in code-breaking diminishes.
AI is not only decoding historical documents but also analyzing medieval manuscripts and ancient scrolls, such as the Herculaneum Papyri, which were carbonized in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Using AI to virtually unroll the scrolls has revealed a treatise on ethics.
AI is also being utilized to create a vast, searchable collection of previously inaccessible sources on Jewish history and culture by transcribing 10 million pages of Hebrew manuscripts. This "Facebook of the past" promises to reveal connections between people, places, and ideas. Additionally, AI has been employed to transcribe 14,600 Latin pages from the medieval archives of Notre Dame Cathedral, a task that would otherwise take decades.
Historian Julie Claustre explains that automation not only saves time but also enables new inquiries that were previously unattainable, transforming the conditions of research.
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