Greg Kondrak: AI Cracks the Voynich Manuscript and Zodiac Cipher

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

Curt Jaimungal

Physics, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2023

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prof. Greg Kondrak discusses how machine learning is being used to decode the Voynich Manuscript and the Dorabella cipher, and explores the limits of artificial intelligence in language understanding. He also examines the Zodiac cipher, the controversy surrounding Voynich, and the philosophical implications of AI lacking truth or motivation.- 00:00:00 - Introduction- 00:03:07 - Overview of the difficulty of the Voynich Manuscript- 00:04:53 - There is no other document like Voynich- 00:11:17 - The controversy of the Voynich- 00:12:38 - All language is decipherment- 00:27:51 - "It is not simple at all"- 00:30:49 - The Dorabella cipher- 00:33:05 - Voynich may not be a human language- 00:35:05 - Universal concepts in language (fighting Chomsky)- 00:43:37 - ChatGPT knows nothing- 00:44:41 - AI doesn't have "truth"- 00:47:09 - Multiple language theory (Voynich)- 00:48:34 - Artificial intelligence lacks motivations- 00:51:48 - What rivals the Voynich?- 00:53:05 - "Puzzles made me a better scientist"- 00:56:26 - The Zodiac cipher- 01:01:27 - The problem of "language understanding" has been solved- 01:06:48 - Training AI in ethics- 01:13:53 - Chinese and English are superior (analytically)- 01:19:35 - Proving what the Voynich was and wasn'tSPONSORS:- Brilliant: 20% off at https://brilliant.org/TOE- New TOE Website (early access to episodes): https://theoriesofeverything.org/- Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal- Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE- PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt- Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs- iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast...- Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9...- Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeveryt...RESOURCES:- YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFW14zSYiFY Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal features long-form, technically detailed interviews with leading researchers in physics, mathematics, consciousness, and philosophy, exploring topics at the level of active research. For academics, graduate students, and anyone seeking depth beyond popular science. SPONSOR: I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE FOLLOW: Substack | Spotify | YouTube | Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You really want to be educated to be somebody who cannot be replaced by a computer.
0:05.9	And I guarantee you that it will never be able to replace the most important part of us, which is the creativity.
0:15.8	Are you sure about that?
0:19.6	Today we talk about the Voynage manuscript, the Zodiac cipher, specialized non-human languages,
0:25.3	the Dora Bella cipher, ciphers in general, and how to go about decrypting them.
0:29.6	Greg Condrak is a professor of artificial intelligence, investigating natural language processing
0:34.2	in a way that it relates to language reconstruction.
0:36.7	He's employed these machine
0:37.7	learning techniques to attempt what can be considered the most objective decipherment of the
0:42.6	Voynage manuscript, which is a considerably rare illustrated codex, handwritten in an otherwise unknown
0:47.8	writing system. It's evaded any attempt to decode it since the Italian Renaissance. The Voynage
0:52.2	manuscript is written on an expensive vellum,
0:54.4	and it's just one of the several puzzles that Professor Condrake has tackled. Another example
0:58.9	being the Dora Bella Cipher. Greg Condrake is also known for proving Chomsky's statement
1:03.0	wrong, the statement that English orthography is close to optimal. My name is Kurt Jymungle. I have a
1:08.1	background in mathematical physics. This podcast is called Theories of Everything is dedicated to the exploration of theories of everything from a theoretical
1:15.8	physics perspective, but as well as exploring the role consciousness has to the fundamental
1:19.8	laws of nature. Each sponsor, as well as the patrons, improves the quality of the videos
1:24.5	drastically. It improves the depth. It improves the frequency. And it goes toward paying the staff, for instance, someone who's editing this full time right now, and then we have an operations manager. In that vein, I want to thanks today's sponsor, Brilliant. If you're familiar with Toe, you're familiar with Brilliant, but for those who don't know, Brilliant is a place where you go to learn math, science, and engineering through these bite-sized
1:44.5	interactive learning experiences.
1:46.4	For example, and I keep saying this, I would like to do a podcast on information theory, particularly
1:51.3	Chiara Marletto, which is David Deutsch's student, has a theory of everything that she puts
	...

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