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Luke Farritor, a student at the University of Nebraska, has achieved a scientific breakthrough in artificial intelligence by successfully deciphering a word on an ancient papyrus dating back more than 2,000 years.
As part of the Vesuvius Challenge, Farritor became the first person to successfully decipher a word on ancient papyrus scrolls. This competition encourages the use of the latest technology to explore ancient scrolls from the library of Herculaneum that were damaged by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
At a press conference on Thursday, it was announced that a 21-year-old computer science student won the $40,000 First Letters Prize after successfully deciphering and reading more than 10 characters on a 4-square-centimeter section of the scroll.
The winner, a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was inspired by the previous work of another contestant, Casey Handmer. Farritor developed a machine learning algorithm that eventually helped him detect a series of letters on a scroll. The decoded word is "Porphyras", which means "purple".
Farritor was the first participant to submit the required number of readable letters in the contest. During the press conference, he shared his excitement from the first moment of discovering the letters: "I saw these letters and just lost my head," Farritor said.
Farritor's use of artificial intelligence to read the Herculaneum scrolls is an innovative approach, given their fragility and risk of damage.
Federica Nicolardi, an expert in papyrology at the University of Naples, described the scrolls as "very complex" and "badly damaged". She expressed the hope that thanks to the new methods, researchers will be able to read more documents, which will lead to a "scientific revolution".
Although Farritor was able to successfully decipher one of the scrolls, many others still remain unexplored. As part of the Vesuvius Challenge, scientists are invited to decipher four fragments from two scanned scrolls with the opportunity to win a grand prize of $700,000.
As part of the Vesuvius Challenge, Farritor became the first person to successfully decipher a word on ancient papyrus scrolls. This competition encourages the use of the latest technology to explore ancient scrolls from the library of Herculaneum that were damaged by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
At a press conference on Thursday, it was announced that a 21-year-old computer science student won the $40,000 First Letters Prize after successfully deciphering and reading more than 10 characters on a 4-square-centimeter section of the scroll.
The winner, a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was inspired by the previous work of another contestant, Casey Handmer. Farritor developed a machine learning algorithm that eventually helped him detect a series of letters on a scroll. The decoded word is "Porphyras", which means "purple".
Farritor was the first participant to submit the required number of readable letters in the contest. During the press conference, he shared his excitement from the first moment of discovering the letters: "I saw these letters and just lost my head," Farritor said.
Farritor's use of artificial intelligence to read the Herculaneum scrolls is an innovative approach, given their fragility and risk of damage.
Federica Nicolardi, an expert in papyrology at the University of Naples, described the scrolls as "very complex" and "badly damaged". She expressed the hope that thanks to the new methods, researchers will be able to read more documents, which will lead to a "scientific revolution".
Although Farritor was able to successfully decipher one of the scrolls, many others still remain unexplored. As part of the Vesuvius Challenge, scientists are invited to decipher four fragments from two scanned scrolls with the opportunity to win a grand prize of $700,000.
