Can AI crack all secret codes? Not Kryptos, maker says

A statue with four secret codes in Virginia has led to its sculptor raging with anger. It has stood there in Langley, near the CIA headquarters, since 1990. Three of the codes have been decoded, but one still remains shrouded in mystery. Over the years, several people have reached out to Jim Sanborn, claiming they have cracked it. However, they are doing it using a chatbot, and Sanborn is lashing out at them for doing so, stating clearly that it cannot be solved using AI, Wired reported.

Sanborn has worked for the CIA and built the sculpture for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It has four panels with four codes, and K4 has remained unsolved because of its knottier techniques.

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However, regular people who aren't professionals in the field have flooded Sanborn with answers they got after running the code through a chatbot and being completely sure that they have solved it.

Talking to Wired, the 79-year-old said that the submissions have risen significantly and he should be charging a $50 fee for reviewing the solutions to keep the cranks away. What has pissed him off even more is the attitude of people using AI chatbots to solve the code. 

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“The character of the emails is different—the people that did their code crack with AI are totally convinced that they cracked Kryptos during breakfast,” he told Wired. They are convinced that they have cracked it, he added.

Some of the responses Sanborn has received reflect the arrogance of people who are actually using AI to crack the code. “What took 35 years and even the NSA with all their resources could not do I was able to do in only 3 hours before I even had my morning coffee," one of the messages reads.

Sanborn has stated that no AI can crack the code on the statue, so people should stop doing that.

AI has come to act as the main tool several people rely on to get answers and end up trusting them completely. A study published last year in the journal Computers in Human Behavior says that such people believe everything the tool says, and this affects their interaction with other people.