ACX: Claude Fable 5.1 Cracks 370-Year-Old Cipher, Apollo Research Expands Hiring
Astral Codex Ten · rss · 2026-09-07
Astral Codex Ten's weekly open thread #450 includes several substantive items beyond the reader survey and EA meetup updates:
- AI cryptanalysis: eval site Vals reports the new Claude Fable 5.1 decoded a famous 370-year-old unsolved cipher by Thomas Urquhart
- Apollo Research hiring: the frontier-AI-scheming-risk group is hiring across nine roles in London and SF (product, control research, security), visas sponsored; its Watcher product monitors billions of agent tokens monthly, and security roles don't require an AI safety background
- Other openings: Ovelle Bio seeks a stem cell biologist for growing human eggs; Innovate Animal Ag is hiring a founding-CTO-type Head of Instrumentation & AI to measure poultry welfare bird-by-bird with machine vision and robotics
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