[larodi]

well, at some point I (like after 5 hours of CC) I can swear im looking at pure random coming out. so perhaps the ability of LLMs to make complex stuff even more complex, would be beneficial. obfuscation, after all, is not about having performant code, but an art form, right?

/curious though given the very nice conversation we're having here, why the parent topic gets down-voted. is neither off-topic, nor rude.../

[lifthrasiir]

I think the "obfuscation" is actually two very different acts: the apparent obfuscation, that is concerned with randomly looking output, and the information-theoretic obfuscation, that takes computational effort to undo it. Commercial obfuscators are mostly the former, making undo much more annoying but easy to undo if you have a right tool. The obfuscation in IOCCC is much more the latter, requiring the heavy logic and deduction to see through that. In my experience LLMs have been capable of doing the former and undoing the latter but not doing the latter, presumably because any obfuscated program still has to run somehow. Given that this form of obfuscation is not common (and that LLMs tend to work well with established things), your initial statement was I believe quite far-fetched.