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For centuries, the <keyword id="2863171" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="herculaneum" source="Orion">Herculaneum</keyword> <keyword id="20522153" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="papyri" source="keywords">papyri</keyword>, a collection of 800 Greek scrolls preserved by the fiery wrath of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, have remained frustratingly mute. Though not victims of bad handwriting, time and decay rendered their text invisible, locking away their secrets for two millennia. While many know the tragedy of <keyword id="269295" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="pompeii" source="Orion">Pompeii</keyword>, Vesuvius also consumed nearby <keyword id="20008838" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="roman" source="keywords">Roman</keyword> cities, including the affluent Herculaneum in southern Italy. Evidence suggests it was likely a coastal retreat for Rome's elite. Among its preserved wonders was the Villa of the Papyri, an extraordinary library boasting over 1,800 papyrus scrolls — the Herculaneum papyri. Though the eruption's heat miraculously preserved these scrolls, centuries of ink smudging and material breakdown left them unreadable. However, a glimmer of hope has emerged from the ashes thanks to three researchers who harnessed the power of <keyword id="6355999" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="AI" source="Orion">AI</keyword> to unlock a portion of one scroll. Their efforts, rewarded with $700,000 in the "Vesuvius Challenge," bring us closer to understanding the lavish lives of the Roman elite. Launched in 2023, the ambitious Vesuvius Challenge aimed to decipher ancient scrolls using "computer vision, machine learning, and hard work." Participants successfully read text from an unopened scroll using virtual unrolling and AI, demonstrating the potential of these techniques. Now, the goal is to unlock an entire library, scaling up methods to read whole scrolls and establish an efficient process for the 800 scrolls held in Naples. The winning team, comprising <keyword id="20522154" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="youssef-nader" source="keywords">Youssef Nader</keyword>, <keyword id="20522155" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="luke-farritor" source="keywords">Luke Farritor</keyword>, and <keyword id="20522156" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="julian-schilliger" source="keywords">Julian Schilliger</keyword>, used AI to decipher faint lettering and distinguish ink from the fragile papyrus. Their groundbreaking work recovered around 5% of the text, revealing discussions on "music, food, and how to enjoy life's pleasures." Experts believe these insights may have come from the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. Intriguingly, the Villa of the Papyri has been linked to Julius Caesar's family, and some believe it could hold thousands more manuscripts. Considering only 3-5% of ancient Greek texts survive, unlocking this library could be revolutionary. The next phase of the competition aims to decipher 85% of the first scroll and pave the way for the remaining 799. Experts like Federica Nicolardi hail this achievement as "the start of a revolution in Herculaneum papyrology and in Greek philosophy in general." As AI tools continue to evolve, they unlock the secrets hidden in the ashes, offering unparalleled insights into the lost world of the Roman elite and enriching our understanding of the ancient world.

AI helps researchers win $700k by decoding contents of 2000-year-old Roman scroll!

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Three students won the Vesuvius Challenge for uncovering text in the Herculaneum papyri.</li><li>The students were awarded a $700,000 prize after using AI to uncover the passages.</li></ul>It pays to be an AI nerd.Earlier this week, three students took home a $700,000 prize for winning the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/herculaneum-scrolls-vesuvius-challenge-first-word-prize-2023-10">Vesuvius Challenge</a>, a competition that aims to decode the Herculaneum papyri, a collection of papyrus scrolls that have been unreadable for centuries. The students, Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor, and Julian Schilliger, had never met in person but were the first team to uncover at least four legible passages in the scrolls of 140 characters each (the length of just two tweets).“I think this promises a very exciting future where seemingly impossible ideas will become possible,” Nader, a 27-year-old <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-booming-is-phd-necessary-machine-learning-jobs-workers-2024-1">machine-learning Ph.D</a>. student at Freie University in Berlin, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/vesuvius-challenge-ai-herculaneum-scrolls-b27c2e30">told The Wall Street Journal</a>. Farritor, 22, is a student at the University of Nebraska, and Schilliger, 28, is a robotics graduate student at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, the Journal reported.The scrolls were buried in the first century during the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/american-tourist-fell-into-italian-volcano-trying-recover-his-phone-2022-7">eruption of Mount Vesuvius</a> in the Villa of the Papyri — an Italian countryside estate that historians have linked to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. About 800 scrolls have been excavated from the site to date. “Some of these texts could completely rewrite the history of key periods of the ancient world,” Robert Fowler, chair of the Herculaneum Society, which raises awareness of the scrolls, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-ai-unlock-ancient-world-secrets/?utm_content=business&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business">told Bloomberg</a>. “This is the society from which the modern Western world is descended.”<div type="image" title="Carbonized scroll of Herculaneum papyri." height="2436" width="3500" msid="107590048" hostid="261" sizebytes="835156"></div>And if uncovering them could mark a pivotal point in human history then their burial was a blessing in disguise. Unlike “virtually every ancient text” that decays once exposed to air, the Herculaneum papyri have been “carbonized by the heat of the volcanic debris” and therefore preserved, according to <a target="_blank" href="https://scrollprize.org/">the Vesuvius Challenge’s website</a>. Three tech industry veterans — former Github CEO Nat Friedman, founder of the search engine Cue, Daniel Gross, and computer science professor Brent Seales — launched the competition in March 2023. It is backed by a bevy of entrepreneurs, investors, and key figures in the tech industry. This year's winners built upon work already underway by Seales, who used X-ray tomography and computer vision to “virtually unwrap” the scrolls. From there, machine learning models can be used to identify ink and, ultimately, decipher words.The passages the winning team uncracked were likely written by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus and touch on "music, food, and how to enjoy life's pleasures," according to a post by Friedman on X. "In the closing section, he throws shade at unnamed ideological adversaries — perhaps the stoics? — who "have nothing to say about pleasure, either in general or in particular," Friedman explained. The competition's big winners helped uncover about 5% of one scroll, but the competition doled out more than 50 prizes last year, totaling more than $1 million to teams who helped find the first letters in the scrolls, assisted with ink detection, and developed open source tools.This year, the bar is even higher, though the payout is lower. The Vesuvius Challenge hopes entrants will help uncover about 90% of the first four scrolls. The winning team will receive about $100,000. The founders of the Vesuvius Challenge hope they’ll be able to crack open and read the entirety of all 800 scrolls in the next few years.

3 students won $700,000 for using AI to translate 2 tweets worth of text from previously unreadable ancient scrolls

<ul class="summary-list"><li>An ancient Greek philosopher's musings about "pleasure" have been rediscovered in an ancient passage.</li><li>The passage is from a scroll that was buried after Mount Vesuvius erupted 2,000 years ago.</li></ul><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-companies-are-using-ai-generative-ai-daily-tasks-automation-2024-1">Armed with AI</a>, a trio of young students have accomplished in a single year what scientists couldn't in 272 years.Luke Farritor, a student at the<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-with-the-most-school-spirit-2015-8#19-university-of-nebraska-at-lincoln--students-say-theres-an-undeniable-sense-of-unity-around-athletics-at-unl-husker-football-games-are-a-prized-tradition-and-the-team-is-a-strong-contender-in-the-big-ten-conference-2"> University of Nebraska-Lincoln</a> and former SpaceX intern, Youssef Nader, an Egyptian PhD student in Berlin, and Julian Schilliger, a Swiss robotics student in Zurich, deciphered text on a 2,000-year-old papyrus scroll, winning them $700,000 of prize money in the process.The scroll is just one of hundreds that were first excavated in 1752. Named the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/herculaneum-scrolls-vesuvius-challenge-first-word-prize-2023-10">Herculaneum Scrolls</a>, after the city they were found in, the collection is the only library left from the ancient world. But their secrets remained unknown for the last 272 years.<div type="image" title="A charred black Herculaneum scroll with red laser lines being scanned at Institut de France by Brent Seales and his team" height="720" width="1300" msid="107507244" hostid="261" sizebytes="31378"></div>No one could decipher them because they'd been burned and buried when <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/italy-skeleton-of-a-roman-killed-steps-from-sea-fled-vesuvius-eruption-2021-12">Mount Vesuvius</a> erupted about 2,000 years ago, leaving them charred and far too delicate to unroll. In fact, previous efforts to read them yielded limited success and damaged some of the scrolls.Enter AI technology. The brilliant student trio used a combination of AI and 3D mapping to decipher letter shapes in a small section of the scroll. Their efforts were part of a competition called the Vesuvius Challenge, a contest that launched in 2023 offering <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/aurora-night-sky-phenomena-steve-new-research-2023-12">citizen scientists</a> $1 million in prizes to whomever could transcribe part of the scroll's text.<h2>What the scroll said</h2><div type="image" title="Several rows of Greek writing on black-and-white images of a papyrus scroll" height="900" width="1200" msid="107507245" hostid="261" sizebytes="237096"></div>The newly translated passages are thought to originate from the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus and contain his thoughts on music and food."The Epicureans had much to say about pleasure and pain, and even in this text, there is a discussion of how abundance and scarcity can affect our pleasure," Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky who took X-ray CT scans of the ancient scrolls in 2009, said in a <a target="_blank" href="https://uknow.uky.edu/research/grand-prize-discovery-made-2000-year-old-herculaneum-scrolls">statement</a>.On Monday, Nat Friedman, a tech executive and former CEO of GitHub who became obsessed with the scrolls during the 2020 Covid lockdown and helped fund the challenge excitedly <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1754519304471814555">posted on X</a> (formerly Twitter): "Today we are overjoyed to announce that our crazy project has succeeded. After 2,000 years, we can finally read the scrolls."<h2>First-prize winner for the second time</h2>Farritor had already won first place in the Vesuvius Challenge's "First Letters Prize," winning him $40,000 last year.He, along with second-place winner Nader, used AI to become the first to read a single word from the scroll. The word was translated from Greek to mean "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVXqisH6VeM">purple dye</a>" or "clothes of purple."<div type="image" title="An image of text from a Herculaneum scroll with ancient Greek letters highlighted in purple" height="750" width="1000" msid="107507246" hostid="261" sizebytes="77328"></div>Several months later, Nader and Farritor, in collaboration with Schilliger had translated entire passages.They went above and beyond the contest's stipulated four columns of text and read an additional 11 partial columns. In total, they transcribed hundreds of words, earning them the grand prize of $700,000.However, the students couldn't have done it without the dedicated work from Seales and his team of researchers.Seales' used the CT scans to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.engr.uky.edu/herculaneum">create</a> the software for virtually unwrapping the scrolls in the first place.<div type="image" title="Seth Parker and Brent Seales scan a replica of the Herculaneum scroll in a machine" height="3200" width="4800" msid="107507247" hostid="261" sizebytes="367948"></div>He and a team of researchers then flattened out the images so they weren't on top of each other like the layers of an onion, and then used machine learning to identify areas with ink.Currently, researchers have only unrolled and deciphered about 5% of a single scroll. Scholars are hoping to find lost treasures from Aristotle or Homer in the other 280 papyri, <a target="_blank" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=42f6ab98441e9ce915982c117acf1c43822ecd285bd4ae5f9282eeab96490b72&amp;postID=65c2139c72404cb0557486c2&amp;postSlug=ai-decipher-ancient-philosophers-work-buried-mount-vesuvius-2024-2&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fd41586-024-00346-8">Nature</a> reported.

A former SpaceX intern and 2 other students won $700,000 for deciphering a 2,000-year-old papyrus scroll using AI. Here's what it said.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Elon Musk is keen to help with efforts to decode 2,000-year-old papyrus scrolls.</li><li>In a post on X, the billionaire volunteered funds for the Vesuvius Challenge project.</li></ul><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk">Elon Musk</a> wants to help with efforts to decode <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-decipher-ancient-philosophers-work-buried-mount-vesuvius-2024-2?mrfhud=true">2,000-year-old papyrus scrolls.</a>In a <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1754519304471814555">post on X</a>, the billionaire offered up funds for the Vesuvius Challenge project, suggesting the money would come from the Musk Foundation. In a message to Bloomberg, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-ceo-elon-musk">Tesla CEO</a> said he didn't know how much he'd contribute.Musk, who is known to be skeptical of AI safety, told the outlet he was in "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-07/elon-musk-to-back-nat-friedman-ai-translation-of-herculaneum-papryi">favor of civilizational enlightenment</a>."Named the <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/herculaneum-scrolls-vesuvius-challenge-first-word-prize-2023-10">Herculaneum Scrolls</a> after the city they were found in, scholars have speculated that they may hold information that could change our understanding of the ancient world.The scrolls have proved almost impossible to decipher because they'd been burned and buried when <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/italy-skeleton-of-a-roman-killed-steps-from-sea-fled-vesuvius-eruption-2021-12">Mount Vesuvius</a> erupted about 2,000 years ago, leaving them charred and far too delicate to unroll. Previous efforts to read them yielded limited success and caused damage.Skip to Monday when Nat Friedman, a tech executive and former CEO of GitHub who helped fund the Vesuvius Challenge, <a target="_blank" rel=" nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1754519304471814555">announced on X</a>: "Today we are overjoyed to announce that our crazy project has succeeded. After 2,000 years, we can finally read the scrolls."Luke Farritor, a former SpaceX intern attending the<a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-with-the-most-school-spirit-2015-8#19-university-of-nebraska-at-lincoln--students-say-theres-an-undeniable-sense-of-unity-around-athletics-at-unl-husker-football-games-are-a-prized-tradition-and-the-team-is-a-strong-contender-in-the-big-ten-conference-2"> University of Nebraska-Lincoln</a>, was among the students who deciphered a passage of the text, winning $700,000 of prize money.Youssef Nader, an Egyptian Ph.D. student in Berlin, and Julian Schilliger, a Swiss robotics student in Zurich, were also part of the winning team.The Vesuvius Challenge is ongoing since the scrolls have only been partially deciphered. The primary goal for 2024 is to read<a target="_blank" href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/three-students-decipher-first-passages-2000-year-old-scroll-burned-vesuvius-eruption-180983738/#:~:text=The%20contest%20organizers%20are%20already,papyri%20and%20other%20ancient%20texts."> 90% of each of the four scrolls</a>.Representatives for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

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AI helps researchers win $700k by decoding contents of 2000-year-old Roman scroll!

Ankush Banerjee

3 students won $700,000 for using AI to translate 2 tweets worth of text from previously unreadable ancient scrolls

Lakshmi Varanasi

A former SpaceX intern and 2 other students won $700,000 for deciphering a 2,000-year-old papyrus scroll using AI. Here's what it said.

Beatrice Nolan

Elon Musk wants to get in on the action to decipher 2,000-year-old papyrus scrolls

Beatrice Nolan

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