Three students have won a $700,000 prize after using AI to read a 2,000-year-old scroll burnt during the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79AD.

The ancient text was unreadable until now after being charred in the Roman town of Herculaneum during the same eruption that destroyed Pompeii.

It is thought to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law and talks of music and food.

Experts have called the breakthrough a “revolution” in Greek philosophy.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    8 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Three students have won a $700,000 prize after using AI to read a 2,000-year-old scroll burnt during the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79AD.

    Scholars believe the style of the writing is typical of the Greek philosopher Philodemus, who followed the teachings of Epicurus, and may have been philosopher-in-residence at Herculaneum.

    But their contents remained a mystery to scholars - they were so badly burnt by volcanic debris in that when they attempted to unroll them they fell apart in their hands.

    Last year a breakthrough came when Dr Brent Seales and his team at the University of Kentucky used high resolution CT scans to unroll the texts, but the black carbon ink used on the scripts was indecipherable from the papyrus itself.

    The model has so far deciphered 2,000 Greek characters written in one of the four scrolls scanned by Dr Seales’ team - which is only 5% of the text.

    Now translated the characters reveal the author discussing the sources of pleasure in life, referencing music and food.


    The original article contains 449 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      I’m betting that by the time this thing reaches 10% it will have inserted an ad for McDonald’s, or at least a Greek word that didn’t exist at the time of writing.

      AI is great at making shit up, and Occam’s Razor implies that’s what is happening when it’s asked to do something impossible.