Napoleon's 1809 code baffled for 217 years, AI cracked it in 6 hours
An AI engineer has successfully deciphered a 217-year-old coded military message from Napoleon Bonaparte using OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra. The message, which had been unreadable due to a lost cipher key, provides historical insights into French troop positions in 1809.
Why it matters
This demonstrates the growing utility of advanced AI models in historical research and cryptanalysis, potentially unlocking vast amounts of previously inaccessible archival data.
A coded military message ordered by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1809 remained unread for 217 years because its cypher key had been lost. But now, an AI engineer has used OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra to reconstruct and decipher the message, revealing details about French and allied troop positions on the eve of Napoleon's war with Austria, according to reports by Live Science and The Times.The breakthrough was achieved by Carter Church, an AI engineer at cybersecurity company SentinelOne, who said the AI completed roughly six hours of model execution on the problem. However, the six-hour figure needs context: Church worked on the project over several evenings and gave the AI more than just the historical image, including existing cryptographic research and historical material.The document dates to March 1809, when Austria was preparing to go to war with Napoleon's France.
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