Three students used AI to read a column from one of the 1,800 scrolls buried along with thousands of other artifacts during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Tuesday 6 February 2024 14:55, United Kingdom
An ancient papyrus scroll buried in ashes after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD has been deciphered for the first time with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
The Herculaneum Papyrus is a collection of approximately 1,800 scrolls that were carbonized during a volcanic eruption, along with thousands of other artifacts.
Located in the town of Herculaneum, near the city of Pompeii, which was also destroyed, over 800 scrolls were excavated from an ancient Roman villa and are now kept in the library of Naples, where every effort is being made. Read it as a failure.
That is until, with the help of an AI-powered coding machine, three students managed to read the 15 columns of the scroll.
The breakthrough came as part of the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition offering a $1 million (£796,000) prize to solve the problem.
Youssef Nader from Germany, Luke Fariter from the US and Julian Siliger from Switzerland will share a $700,000 (£557,000) prize after reading more than 2,000 letters from a scroll. Become.
“These 15 columns come from the end of the first scroll we were able to read and include new texts from the ancient world never seen before,” said the contest organizers. One, Nat Friedman, told X.
He said the book was likely written by Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher who wrote about “music, food, and the enjoyment of life.”
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The “virtual unwrapping” of the scrolls works by using CT scans to create 3D scans of the text.
The scroll is then divided into segments and inked areas are detected by a machine learning model, an application of AI.
The discovery surprised scientists and historians, including academic and lecturer Professor Alice Roberts, who called it “the archaeological discovery of a lifetime”.
Friedman said the deciphered portion of the document represents only 5% of the scrolls that have been discovered, and that there are likely thousands more still undiscovered at Papyris Villa. He said that there is a sex.
“In 2024, our goal is to read several passages of text all the way through the entire scroll, and to the first team that was able to read at least 90% of all four volumes scanned, we will add 10 new We announce a $1 million prize. “Mr. Friedman wrote about X.”