Last November, the world was struck by the almost unbelievable news that a 2000-year-old Roman scroll had been deciphered thanks to an antediluvian graphics card from Nvidia. Machine learning running on this graphics card was able to "assemble" a huge number of scans in such a way that the scroll made sense. The entire endeavor was part of the Vesuvius Challenge, which aimed to decipher as many scrolls as possible destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Just for fun, at that time the student behind the deciphering of the scroll using the Nvidia graphics card came up with $40. Even then, it was said that $000 was nothing compared to the main prize of $40. This was intended for someone who could decipher even more significantly destroyed scrolls with a different type of ink in them, and in the range of at least 000 characters of continuous text. miniat least on four passages of the given scrolls. And although this task seemed almost impossible at the time, it was nevertheless successful.
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Nat Friedman, one of the organizers of the challenge, reported on the social network X about the unraveling of the scroll. Specifically, three students are behind the solution, who used, again, what else but advanced artificial intelligence. It was she who was able to perfectly disassemble the CT scans of the scroll and then assemble readable parts from them.
"These fifteen columns (you can see them above) come from the very end of the first scroll we've been able to read, and contain new, previously unknown text from the ancient world. The author - probably the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus - writes here about music, food and how to enjoy the joys of life. In the final part, he casts a shadow over the unnamed ideological opponents - perhaps the Stoics? – who “have nothing to say about pleasure either in general or in particular”.
This year, the Vesuvius challenge continues. The text we have uncovered so far represents just 5% of a single scroll. In 2024, we aim to move from reading a few snippets of text to the entire scrolls, and we are announcing a new grand prize of $100 for the first team to be able to read at least 000% of all four scrolls we scanned.
The scrolls stored in Naples that remain to be read represent more than 16 megabytes of ancient text. However, the villa where the scrolls were found has only been partially excavated, and scientists say there may be thousands more scrolls underground. We hope that the success of the Vesuvius Challenge will be a catalyst for the excavation of the villa, that the main library will be discovered, and that whatever we find there will rewrite history and inspire us all. It was a great pleasure to work on this strange and wonderful project. Thank you to Brent Seales for laying the groundwork for this work for many years, thank you to friends and Twitter users whose donations fueled our efforts, and thank you to the many contestants whose contributions make the Vesuvius Challenge a success.” writes Nat Friedman on his X account. So, as you can see for yourself, artificial intelligence brings truly unprecedented possibilities to humanity, which we could not have imagined until recently.chat to seem.
