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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Almost 2,000 years ago, Mount Vesuvius buried hundreds of papyrus scrolls in the city of Herculaneum.</li><li>The scrolls can't be unrolled so the Vesuvius Challenge was launched to find alternative methods.</li></ul>Luke Farritor, a 21-year-old undergraduate student at the <a 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</a>, just won $40,000 for a breakthrough discovery in science. Farritor was the first to read a word from one of the ancient Herculaneum scrolls as part of the <a href="https://scrollprize.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vesuvius Challenge</a> — a competition with $1,000,000 in prizes for people who can unlock the secrets of these <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-dead-sea-scrolls-cave-expedition-in-qumran-cliffs-2017-2">ancient scrolls</a> using modern technology. <h2>Why the Herculaneum scrolls can't be read like normal</h2>When <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mount-vesuvius-digitalglobes-top-image-of-the-year-2014-1">Mount Vesuvius</a> erupted in 79 CE, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-sequence-ancient-pompeii-victims-genome-for-the-first-time-2022-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pompeii</a> wasn't the only town it obliterated. Mudslides and immense heat reached all the way to the prosperous <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/visiting-pompeii-and-herculaneum-are-2-very-different-experiences-2019-7">city of Herculaneum,</a> in what is now Itlay. The heat was so intense, it instantaneously transformed hundreds of papyri scrolls into fossilized chunks of carbon. Those ancient scrolls then lay buried in mud for 1,700 years until they were finally excavated in 1752. Any attempts to unfurl the Herculaneum scrolls, which now resemble charcoal logs, would damage them beyond repair."These are such crazy objects. They're all crumpled and crushed," Federica Nicolardi, a member of the academic committee that reviewed Farritor's findings, told Nature.<div type="image" title="Seth Parker and Brent Seales scan a replica of the Herculaneum scroll in a machine" height="3200" width="4800" msid="104384489" hostid="261" sizebytes="367948"></div>That's where modern-day technology comes in.Instead, researchers have used X-rays and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/what-is-machine-learning">machine learning</a> to read a word from one of the scrolls for the very first time. As part of the Vesuvius Challenge, the University of Kentucky recruited citizen scientists to use AI to parse out words from the X-ray images of the still-rolled scrolls. Farritor was the first to read a word from the scroll and was awarded $40,000 from the Vesuvius Challenge at a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0EsoAbRk1M" target="_blank" rel="noopener">press conference</a> announcing the finding on Thursday. <h2>Purple cloth </h2>To win the prize, Farritor needed to detect at least 10 legible letters on the scroll. Working on a region that was less than a square inch, Farritor's algorithm detected several letters, including a complete word. Farritor was the first person to submit enough legible letters to win the prize."I saw these letters and I just completely freaked out," he said during the press conference. "I freaked out, almost fell over, almost cried."<div type="image" title="An image of text from a Herculaneum scroll with ancient Greek letters highlighted in purple" height="750" width="1000" msid="104384491" hostid="261" sizebytes="77328"></div>Niccolardi, a professor of classics at the University of Naples Federico II, read the ancient Greek word, "πορφυρας" which means either "purple dye" or "cloths of purple." While she noted that there isn't enough context to understand what the scroll is saying, she said she's confident scholars will soon be able to read more of the document. "I think this will be a great revolution" in the field of papyrology. She noted that these are unknown texts, making their unraveling of great interest to literary scholars as well. When they do get the full picture of what the scroll contains, Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, expects it to contain familiar themes."What I expect is writing that expresses what it means to be human, speaking of love and of war and of the things that still matter to us because <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/geoffrey-hinton-ai-smarter-than-humans-openai-godfather-chatgpt-2023-10">we are human</a>, just like they were human."<h2>The future of unwrapped scrolls </h2>With so many of the scrolls unread, there's still a grand prize, worth $700,000, on the line. To win, a team will have to read four passages from the two scanned scrolls. <div type="image" title="12 brown pieces of the opened Herculaneum papyrus scroll known as P.Herc.118" height="938" width="1500" msid="104384492" hostid="261" sizebytes="165854"></div>Seales said it's not just ancient texts that could benefit from the techniques the university is using.He noted that the Frankin papers, damaged documents that were part of an expedition to the Arctic, are a candidate."It's unclear what's written on those papers," he said. Virtual unwrapping might be the thing that could reveal it."

A 21-year-old won $40,000 for using AI to read the first word on a 2,000-year-old papyrus scroll buried by Mount Vesuvius

<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>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>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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A 21-year-old won $40,000 for using AI to read the first word on a 2,000-year-old papyrus scroll buried by Mount Vesuvius

Jenny McGrath

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

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

Lakshmi Varanasi

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

Beatrice Nolan

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