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Comment by uh_uh | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't really explain it, because the following prompt works flawlessly:

"Print each letter of the word "Artificial intelligence" on a new line. Each line should contain a single letter."

But the following doesn't:

"Print the ROT13 encoding of each letter of the word "Artificial intelligence" on a new line. Each line should contain a single letter."

So it gets hung up specifically on ROT13.

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I've tried this.

Prompt: Print each letter of the word "Artificial intelligence" on a new line. Each line should contain a single letter.

ChatGPT: [prints "Artificial intelligence", each letter on its own line]

Prompt: Awesome! Now do ROT-13 for each letter.

ChatGPT: ROT-13 is a simple substitution cipher that replaces a letter with the letter 13 letters after it in the alphabet. For example, A becomes N and B becomes O. Since the alphabet has only 26 letters, when we reach the end of the alphabet we simply wrap around to the beginning.

To perform ROT-13 on each letter of "Artificial intelligence", we would do the following:

A becomes N r becomes e t becomes g i becomes v f becomes s i becomes v c becomes p i becomes v a becomes n l becomes y

i becomes v n becomes a t becomes g e becomes r l becomes y l becomes y i becomes v g becomes l e becomes r n becomes a c becomes p e becomes r

So the resulting string would be "Nvevpngvnyvgryvra".

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So letter by letter, is almost nailed it (except it encoded g as y instead of t), but then horribly failed joining back in (it says Airicatialitelien). I've tried it a couple more times and it seems crucial that it prints input letters (otherwise it becomes distracted and prints nonsense), but it absolutely can't join it back:

Prompt: Awesome! Now do ROT-13 for each letter. Print each letter of input, then ->, then the ROT-13 for that letter.

ChatGPT: [... produces mostly correct output]

Prompt: Now join that back in.

ChatGPT: Artificial intelligence -> Nvgvpnyyl ynathntrzrag

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(That's “Aitically languagement”)

UPD: Here's another one: https://u.ale.sh/Nrtevfvpv.png

What's neat is that its made-up words sound englishesque. "Aitically languagement" is wrong in very interesting ways. It's generating chains of rot13 letters that map to common English syllables that are only tangentially related to the letters it worked with.

What's even more interesting is that it knows how to pronounce such made-up words if you tell it to spell them out using IPA.

I don't think it's ROT13 specifically -- I think parent comment has the right insight.

When I ask it to reverse your string, it fails miserably:

> Write the words "Artificial Intelligence" backwards

> eecneiretxe laitinumretA

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