AI reads text from ancient Herculaneum scroll for the first time
This is exactly the sort of thing AI should be used for - the stuff that humans can’t do. Writing nonsense articles or creating bad art should be left to the humans.
Humans can do this, which is why the AI was able to. AI just automated the process, which is great, but the same thing as Excel replacing handwritten spreadsheets or genome sequencing projects which in both cases speed up things people are able to do.
The AI is reading text on unopenable scrolls based on miniscule differences in texture on areas that were inked. It was trained on openable scrolls where they knew what text was on the other side of them. The whole point of the article was to talk about how this makes the contents of the unopenable scrolls at all accessible, unlike prior because humans cannot read them. It feels like you didn’t read the article.
Slapping an edit here: this comment was inaccurate. Compared to using AI for this, humans working out what the scrolls say is infeasible given how long it would take, but I don’t think it’s fair to say impossible
AI is not a sensor. The sensor let them sense things in the scroll. The AI used methods that could be done by people, just a lot faster. It is very impressive, but not something people are unable to do, just not able to do in a reasonable amount of time.
What do you mean? Humans have been translating ancient texts for actual centuries. What is this bot doing that a human can’t?
But did it make up half of what it “read”?
And it says, “you know what would really suck? If a volcano erupted in the middle of me writing thi”
Or maybe “everything is going so well right now. Nothing could go wrong!”
And then BOOM! In all seriousness I couldn’t even imagine what that must have been like. Absolutely terrifying.
All fun and games until someone feeds it a shem scroll intended for a golem.
For hundreds of years people have dreamed of the day when technology could unlock these doors to the forgotten past. It’s simply incredible to be alive to witnesses the future that the people who first uncovered them hoped would come.
