The Artificial Intelligence is also capable of reading the history
From the papyrus of Herculaneum to lost languages. A greater revolution within the great revolution, never seen before.
New tools based on Artificial Intelligence (IA) are making it possible to read old texts.
One of the texts that from the Herculaneum papyruses found in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, fragile enough to be unrolled, passing through the vast archive of the kings of 27 Korean kings who lived between the 14th century and the beginning of the 20th century, continues proceeding tables of Crete of the 2nd millennium BC, exculpations with the complicated writing called Lineal B.
The AI is revolutionizing the sector and generating cantidades of data never before seen, as the Nature magazine points out in an analysis published on the web.
One of the most important results that is obtaining knowledge of neural networks - models composed of artificial neurons and inspired in the structure of the cerebro- has to be found with the Herculaneum papyrus.
Thanks to the international competition Vesuvius Challenge, which will take place in 2023, in which more than 1,000 research groups will participate, it is possible to first decipher not only the letters and words, but also entire extracts of carbonized texts.
"This moment really reminds me: now I'm experiencing something that will be a historic moment in my field," comments Federica Nicolardi, papyrologist from the Federico II University of Naples who is participating in the competition.
To obtain the reading of the papy
rus, a virtual rolling technique was developed, which scans the rolls thanks to the X-ray tomography, but each head is rolled and rolled in a flat image.
Furthermore, the AI distinguishes the carbon-based dye, invisible on the skins because it has the same density of the papyrus on which it rests.
In February 2024, the $700,000 prize was awarded to three investigators who produced 16 clearly readable columns of text, but the competition continues.
The next prize of $200,000 will be awarded to the first few who achieve 90% of four papyrus cards.
This method opens the way to reading other texts that are now inaccessible, such as the hidden ones in the settings of medieval books or in the books that were sent to Egyptian mothers.
Without counting how hundreds or thousands of papyrus can still be found in the bay of Herculaneum.
"Everyone would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of humanity," says Brent Seales, from the University of Kentucky, creator of the Vesuvius Challenge.
The first great project that demonstrated the potential of AI born at the University of Oxford in 2017 with the aim of deciphering gray inscriptions found in Sicily where many parts were broken.
The efforts of the investigators produced a red neural called Ithaca, which is freely accessible on the Internet.
Ithaca can restore the parts that are missing with 62% accuracy, compared to 25% of a human expert, but when the red neural reaches the investigators the accuracy drops to 72%.
AI is also fundamental in other ways: for example, read one of the largest historical archives in the world, formed by diary records that contain the records of 27 Korean kings written in Hanja, an ancient writing system based on Chinese characters.
Or, on the contrary, decipher an ancient language from which only a few texts survive, such as the 1,100 proceeding tables of Knossos (Crete), which contain information about shepherds.
But the enormous amount of data that the algorithms are gradually revealing poses a great challenge: "There are not enough papyrus scientists", says Nicolardi.
“We will probably try to create a much bigger global community than the current one,” added Seales.
For experts, the fear that AI can relegate conventional knowledge and skills to a secondary level is unfounded.
“The AI is making the work of papyrus more relevant than ever before,” says Richard Ovenden, head of the Oxford University Bodleian Library.
