Using AI to read the words on a 2,000-year-old scroll, a young man received a 'huge' reward

AI is changing human life in many aspects, it even helped a young man receive a $40,000 reward for reading the words on a 2,000-year-old scroll.

Luke Farritor (21 years old) , a student at the University of Nebraska, has just won a $40,000 prize for a groundbreaking discovery in science.

Farritor was the first person to read the text on ancient scrolls as part of the Vesuvius Challenge (a competition with a $1 million prize for anyone who could unlock the secrets of ancient scrolls using modern technology).

Why can't ancient scrolls be read as they should?

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, Pompeii wasn't the only town wiped out. The landslides and intense heat reached as far as the thriving city of Herculaneum in what is now Italy.

The intense heat instantly turned hundreds of scrolls into fossilized blocks of carbon, which were then buried in mud for 1,700 years until they were excavated in 1752.

Any attempt to open the ancient scrolls, which now resemble charred logs, would damage them beyond repair.

Federica Nicolardi, a member of the academic committee that reviewed Farritor's discovery, told Nature that these were crazy objects, all of them crumpled.

Seth Parker and Brent Seales of the Digital Restoration Initiative. (Photo: UK Photo How did AI read the ancient scrolls?)

Unable to open the scrolls in the conventional way, the researchers used X-rays and machine learning to read each word of the scrolls.

As part of the Vesuvius Challenge, the University of Kentucky recruited scientists to use AI to analyze the words in the scroll.

To win the prize, Farritor needed to detect at least 10 legible letters on the scroll. Working on an area less than a square inch, Farritor's algorithm detected several letters, including a complete word.

Image of text from an ancient scroll with ancient Greek letters highlighted in purple. (Photo: University of Kentucky)

Farritor was the first person to read a word from the scroll and was awarded $40,000 from the Vesuvius Challenge. 'I saw these letters and I was completely terrified,' he said at a press conference.

Luke Farritor used machine learning to make the X-ray image of the scroll clear enough to read.

According to Nicclardi, professor at the University of Naples Federico II, reading from ancient Greek, "πορφυρας " means "purple dye" or "purple cloth".

Although there is not enough context to understand what the scroll says, she believes scholars will soon be able to read more of the material. 'I think this is going to be a huge revolution' in the field of papyrus.

She notes that these are largely unknown texts, making their elucidation of great interest to scholars as well.

The Future of the Undeciphered Scrolls

12 brown fragments of the opened ancient scroll known as P.Herc.118. (Photo: Oxford University).

With so many scrolls yet to be read, there is still a grand prize of $700,000 left. To win, a team will have to read four passages from two scanned scrolls.