Ancient scroll ‘fossilized’ by Mount Vesuvius eruption finally deciphered thanks to AI! You won’t believe how this computer science student cracked the code!
The Herculaneum Papyri, an ancient scroll preserved by the volcanic ash from the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD, has been a mystery for centuries. But now, thanks to an open-source AI project, its secrets have been revealed! According to the Vesuvius Challenge, computer science student Luke Farritor became the first person in 2000 years to see an entire word from an unopened scroll. Talk about a historic breakthrough!
All of this was made possible because of the open-source approach. The machine learning techniques contestants used may not be new, but the idea of bringing an “open-source mindset to an academic project” is what led to these amazing discoveries. By sharing the data and creating incentives for contestants, they were able to explore countless ideas in a short amount of time.
So how exactly did AI decipher this ancient text? It all started with the University of Kentucky researchers using computer vision to virtually “open” the scrolls in 2015. This allowed them to create virtual images of the scrolls without damaging them. Then, in 2019, CT scans generated 3D images of the scrolls, setting the stage for the Vesuvius Challenge.
Enter Farritor, who built upon previous discoveries by another contestant named Casey Handmer. Using machine learning, Farritor trained a model to recognize ink “crackle patterns” on the scrolls. This model then found a formation of letters that spelled out the word “porphyras,” which means purple in the ancient script. For this groundbreaking discovery, Farritor was awarded $40,000!
But Farritor wasn’t the only one who cracked the code. Another contestant, biorobotics student Youssef Nader, used a different method involving unsupervised pre-training models. He found letters that potentially formed the words “achieving” and “similar,” earning him $10,000.
Now that we have deciphered a word from the scrolls, the race is on to unravel the rest. The Vesuvius Challenge is offering a grand prize of $700,000 to anyone who can read “four passages of text” from the scrolls. If you’re interested in joining the challenge, head over to their website, Kaggle, or check out the code on Github. There’s even a lively conversation happening on Discord!
So, what do you think of this amazing breakthrough in deciphering ancient texts? Do you believe there are more secrets waiting to be uncovered? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below! Don’t miss out on the conversation!
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