secret military message from Napoleon Bonaparte has been deciphered after more than two centuries, with artificial intelligence

[caesar novus]

used GPT-6 Astra to decode the 1809 correspondence, which contained Napoleon's instructions to French Gen. Auguste de Marmont and his prediction that Austria was heading toward defeat

[guidoLaMoto]

When I was a kid, sitting at the dinner table with my family, my father would frequently ask "Whadja learn In school today, kid?"....I'd make a face as if I were thinking, then make up something like "The Belgian Congo is the world's leading exporter of Tungsten and the leading importer of woolen socks."....Dad would be satisfied and we could go back to enjoying our meal in peaceful silence.

How do we know the machine got the message right?

"A decoding key is believed to have originally accompanied the correspondence,..."......That makes no sense at all. Pretty stupid if true.

[caesar novus]

9 hours ago, guidoLaMoto said:

That makes no sense at all. Pretty stupid if true.

Must mean that the decode key was filed by the original archivist. Otherwise why save the letter, which looks like hen scratching:

Better source is https://www.euronews.com/2026/10/02/ai-decodes-217-year-old-napoleonic-letter-in-6-hours

[guidoLaMoto]

The first & last lines are obviously plain French....The body of the message seems to be written in an artificial alphabet....I wonder if all the vertical dashes are just check marks used by the reader to keep track of his place as he used the key to decipher the symbols one by one?

Sherlock Holmes didn't need no stinkin' AI to quickly decipher the codes of the Dancing Men or Porlock's  message in The Valley of Fear.