- cross-posted to:
- tech@piefed.world
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- tech@piefed.world
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
You must log in or # to comment.
Correction: Claude found a plausible way these curve points were generated. And “plausible” is carrying a metric fuckton of weight here.
It found PRNG settings that could theoretically generate the same values, but the fact that it requires thousands of iterations makes me think this is more of a coincidence than anything. Especially given that the NSA employee remembered something completely different.
They write this is the model questioning whether it could be coincidence… Chances for that look veeeeeeeeeeery low… Looks like a “1:number of atoms in the universe” situation…
Hmm wait. Let me be careful about the plausibility: is it suspicious that such an obvious thing wasn’t discovered in 25 years? It’s verified by direct computation on my side: 160-bit match from a 32-bit seed + small index: no chance coincidences (10 × 160 bits). It’s real.
If I’m interpreting it correctly, that’s the probability that this particular PRNG with those particular seeds produces those particular outputs. That’s a strawman argument; a PRNG with uniform output should eventually produce any value.
It’s perfectly believable that a known broken PRNG from 40+ years ago could be backsolved. The part I doubt is the sensationalized part, that the LLM found the exact method with which it was calculated. It’s just a plausible choice for a random oracle. It’s a local minimum the LLM settled into.
That’s the thing with random oracles, there’s likely so many plausible combinations of candidate algorithms and inputs/seed values that the actual truth is almost certainly lost to history.