DeepMind’s new AI device helps resolve debate over historical Athenian decrees

This fragmented inscription records a decree concerning the Acropolis of Athens and dates back to 485-484 BCE.

Enlarge / This fragmented inscription information a decree in regards to the Acropolis of Athens and dates again to 485-484 BCE. (credit score: Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Google DeepMind has collaborated with classical students to create a brand new AI device that makes use of deep neural networks to assist historians decipher the textual content of broken inscriptions from historical Greece. The brand new system, dubbed Ithaca, builds on an earlier textual content restoration system known as Pythia.

Ithaca would not simply help historians in restoring textual content—it may possibly additionally establish a textual content’s location of origin and the date of creation, based on a brand new paper the analysis staff printed within the journal Nature. Actually, Ithaca has already been used to assist resolve an ongoing debate amongst historians concerning the right dates for a gaggle of historical Athenian decrees. An interactive model of Ithaca is freely out there, and the staff is making its code open supply.

Many historical sources—whether or not they be written on scrolls, papyri, stone, metallic, or pottery—are so broken that enormous chunks of textual content are sometimes illegible. Figuring out the place the texts originated may also be a problem, since they’ve doubtless been moved a number of instances. As for precisely figuring out once they have been produced, radiocarbon relationship and comparable strategies cannot be used since they’ll injury the priceless artifacts. So the daunting and time-consuming job of deciphering these incomplete texts falls to so-called epigraphists who focus on these expertise.

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