AI used to decipher scrolls charred by the eruption of Vesuvius. Three researchers won a $700,000 prize on Monday for successfully deciphering, using artificial intelligence, a small portion of handwritten scrolls.
The Herculaneum papyri consist of some 800 scrolls, according to the competition organizers. Resembling charred logs and preserved at the Institut de France in Paris and the National Library in Naples, the scrolls crumble and are easily damaged when trying to unroll them. According to an inventory from the University of California at Irvine, only 3 to 5% of ancient Greek texts would have survived until the modern era.