Posted 3/12/2024, 6:53:02 PM
New AI Technology Reads Ancient Burnt Scrolls From Mount Vesuvius, Wins $700K
- Ancient Greek text from a burned scroll has been read using new machine learning technology, earning the researchers a $700,000 prize
- The scrolls come from a library buried and carbonized in the 79CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius
- The competition that awarded the prize encouraged transparency and collaboration to improve reading techniques
- Hundreds more scrolls await reading, but access to equipment and manual processing causes bottlenecks
- Analyzing and piecing together the recovered texts still requires human experts in ancient languages and ideas