From The Watchers, February 7:
On Monday, February 5, 2024, three researchers were awarded a $700,000 prize for employing artificial intelligence to decipher a 2 000-year-old scroll that was charred in the Mount Vesuvius eruption, marking a significant advancement in the field of historical document restoration.
The Herculaneum papyri, consisting of about 800 Greek scrolls carbonized by the 79 CE eruption, have been a tantalizing yet elusive source of knowledge about the ancient world since they were discovered in the 18th century.
The scrolls, stored at the Institut de France in Paris and the National Library of Naples, have remained largely indecipherable due to their fragile state, resembling logs of hardened ash that crumble upon any attempt to unroll them.
In a bid to unlock their secrets without causing further damage, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Brent Seales launched the Vesuvius Challenge in March 2023, offering $1 million in prizes for breakthroughs in research.
The challenge involved high-resolution CT scans of four scrolls, challenging participants to discern faint Greek lettering through advanced AI pattern recognition techniques....
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