Posted 2/10/2024, 8:28:00 PM
Students Win $700K AI Competition to Read Ancient Scrolls Buried by Vesuvius
- Three students won $700,000 for using AI to uncover readable text from previously unreadable ancient Roman scrolls buried during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
- The students are from universities in Berlin, Nebraska, and Switzerland and had never met in person before teaming up
- They uncovered passages about "how to enjoy life's pleasures" which are believed to have been written by the philosopher Philodemus
- The competition aimed to decode the Herculaneum scrolls was launched in 2023 by tech industry veterans and has awarded over $1 million in prizes
- The goal is to fully uncover all 800 scrolls within the next few years using AI and other computational techniques