Mollick let Claude loose on the Voynich manuscript: 211 techniques, all dead ends
emollick · x · 2026-09-19
Ethan Mollick set Claude loose on the Voynich manuscript (Yale's Beinecke MS 408). The model tried 211 analytical techniques — 31 it claimed were never tried before — and hit dead ends on all of them.
The resulting website was written entirely by the computer programs themselves: they measured the text on page scans and full transcriptions, compared it with writing in 31 real languages, and tested seven hypotheses about the manuscript's origin. Verdict: no translation found, and its alphabet appears in no other book. The site also reproduces Layfield and Davis's finding (Digital Medievalist, July 2026) that the two halves of folded sheets share more similar words, suggesting the book was meant to be read sheet by sheet. Mollick notes a guardrail tripped mid-run and the model switched to Opus, making some prose "too Claudy"; he gave only encouraging prompts and no input on the final product.
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