DeepMind AI tool helps historians restore ancient texts

AI software can help historians interpret and date ancient texts by reconstructing works destroyed over time, according to a new paper published in Nature. A team of computer scientists and experts in classical studies led by DeepMind and Ca' Foscari University of Venice trained a transformer-based neural network to restore …

[Tom 7]

I feel old!

Γαμώτο κουλ!

[Gene Cash]

The best results are reached when human and machine work together

Translation: they make different guesses, so they're more likely to hit the jackpot.

[Woodnag]

Restored

Just as long as the published text shows what parts are the guessed text. 72 per cent =/ restored.

[Richard Tobin]

Needs to be used with care

Being trained on documents from which our existing knowledge of ancient history is derived, it runs the risk of interpreting texts so as to conform to that knowledge, and missing unexpected facts.

[jake]

Re: Needs to be used with care

It doesn't interpret. It interpolates.

[Notas Badoff]

Re: Needs to be used with care

"... judge whether the model's guesses seem accurate or not." So, more like what I know already?

Like so many other areas of life, adding computers/AI to the mix amplifies positives and negatives. Here it amplifies the guessednesses. (I'm sure that's a word! I just filled in a couple letters between known-good parts.)

[jake]

This is interpolation, not science.

Best guesses are still just guesses. Let's not get all excited and think that this thing is re-creating a lost original. Just because there is a computer in the mix doesn't make it so. As they say, it's at best 72% accurate with known texts. Gawd/ess only knows how far off it is with the unknown ones.

Put another way, it is between a third and a quarter made-up bullshit. Ask any school teacher how accurate a child's overall paper will be if it's that full of error.

[lglethal]

Not really relevant but...

a historian with the name Thea studying Ancient Greece. Nominative Determinism for the win!

[redpawn]

I could use this

I can read about 25% of my wife's handwriting, with her help I can read about 80%.

[lglethal]

Re: I could use this

Is she a doctor by any chance?

Those sound about the correct statistics for any doctor I've ever visited...

[herman]

Ancient Texting

The buzzword blurb sounds like someone started to use a texting app with a predictive keyboard for Greek.

That is how Paris would do it...