Three students get $700,000 after using AI to read ancient texts

• Three students have won the Vesuvius Challenge to discover the writings on the Herculaneum papyri.
• The student who used AI to discover the passage was awarded a $700,000 prize.
• According to organizers, the text discovered is about “how to enjoy life’s pleasures.”

It’s worth being an AI geek.

Earlier this week, three students took home $700,000 in first-place prizes. vesuvius challengea contest aimed at deciphering the Herculaneum Papyrus, a collection of papyrus documents that have remained undecipherable for centuries.

Although students Yusef Nader, Luke Fariter, and Julian Siliger had never met each other in person, they each found at least four legible sentences in a 140-character scroll (the length of two tweets). They were the first team to do so.

“I think this promises a very exciting future where seemingly impossible ideas become possible,” said Nader, 27. machine learning phd. student at Freie University in Berlin, told the Wall Street Journal. Fariter, 22, is a student at the University of Nebraska, and Siliger, 28, is a robotics graduate student at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, the magazine reported.

The scroll was buried in the 1st century AD. eruption of mount vesuvius at the Villa of Papyrus, an Italian country mansion that historians associate with Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. Approximately 800 scrolls have been excavated from the ruins to date.

“Some of these documents have the potential to completely rewrite the history of important periods in the ancient world,” says Robert Fowler, president of the Herculaneum Society, which raises awareness of the scrolls. told Bloomberg. “This is the society that gave rise to the modern Western world.”

And if their discoveries have the potential to mark important points in human history, their burials were a blessing in disguise. According to the Vesuvius Challenge website, unlike “virtually all ancient texts” that decay when exposed to air, the Herculaneum Papyrus was “charred by the heat of the volcanic debris” and is therefore preserved.

Three technology industry veterans, former Github CEO Nat Friedman, search engine Cue founder Daniel Gross, and computer science professor Brent Shields launched the contest. It is backed by many entrepreneurs, investors, and leading figures in the technology industry.

This year’s award builds on work already underway by Shields, which used X-ray tomography and computer vision to “virtually unravel” scrolls. From there, machine learning models can be used to identify the ink and ultimately decipher the words.

According to Friedman’s post on X, the text that the winning team deciphered was probably written by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus and touches on “how to enjoy music, food, and the pleasures of life.” Ideological opponents — perhaps ascetics, Friedman explained — “have nothing to say about pleasure in general or specifically.”

Winners of this competition contributed to the discovery of approximately 5% of a volume, while last year’s competition awarded 50 to teams who helped discover the scroll’s first letter, assist with ink detection, and develop an open document. More prizes were given out, totaling more than $1 million. source tools.

Dividends will be lower this year, but the hurdles will be even higher. The Vesuvius Challenge expects participants to help uncover about 90% of his first four volumes. The winning team will receive approximately $100,000.

The founders of the Vesuvius Challenge hope that all 800 volumes will be able to be deciphered and read within the next few years.