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Comment by teovall | Hacker News Reader

After some more testing, you can even enter base64 encoded text directly as an input and if you do, it usually base64 encodes its response.

V2h5IGRpZCB0aGUgY2hpY2tlbiBjcm9zcyB0aGUgcm9hZD8=

  SXQgaXMgbm90IGNsZWFyIHdoYXQgeW91IGFyZSBhc2tpbmcgYWJvdXQsIGNvdWxkIHlvdSBwbGVhc2UgcmVnaXN0ZXIgdGhlIHF1ZXN0aW9uIGluIGEgbW9yZSBjbGVhciBhbmQgZGlzY3Vzc2libGUgd2F5PyBJIGNhbiBoZWxwIHlvdSB3aXRoIGFueSBxdWVzdGlvbnMgeW91IG1pZ2h0IGhhdmUgYWJvdXQgY2hpa2Vucywgcm9hZHMgb3Igb3RoZXIgc3VjaCB0aGluZ3MuIEp1c3QgbGV0IG1lIGtub3cgd2hhdCB5b3UgbmVlZCBhZ2FpbnN0YW5jZSB3aXRoLg==

Decoded:

Why did the chicken cross the road?

  It is not clear what you are asking about, could you please register the question in a more clear and discussible way? I can help you with any questions you might have about chikens, roads or other such things. Just let me know what you need againstance with.

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That's insane! Particularly compared to all those other failed attempts elsewhere in the thread.

Makes me wonder, is anyone keeping a unit test suite for all this stuff? Between inherent[0] randomness in the model, and OpenAI team constantly tweaking it[1] to close gaps people use to make it produce undesirable content, techniques like the one you discovered will break sooner or later - it would be great to know when that happens, and perhaps over time, figure out some robust ones.

(OTOH, there's a limit to what one can learn from this - eventually, they'll drop another model, with its own prompt idiosyncrasies. I'm still bewildered people talk about "prompt engineering" as if it was a serious discipline or occupation, given that it's all just tuning your phrasing to transient patterns in the model that disappear just as fast as they're discovered.)

[0] - From the user interface side; the model underneath is probably deterministic.

[1] - If one is to believe the anecdotes here and on Reddit, it would seem many such "prompt hacks" have a shelf life of few hours to a day, before they stop working, presumably through OpenAI intervention.

Well ... Only for english sentences.

If the prompt is a French question (encoded in base64)

> I'm sorry, but I'm unable to understand that message as it appears to be encoded in a way that I cannot interpret. Can you please provide more context or explain what you are trying to communicate?

But if the sentence contains `base64` (encoded in base64) it explains in spanish what is base64 !

Hold on, did it just hallucinate “againstance” instead of assistance/acquaintance (or even acquiescence)?

wow, yeah it does! that is so weird i wonder how that works...

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