Big Techday 24: AI Archaeology - Reading Ancient Texts With AI - C. Handmer, J. Schilliger, Y. Nader

AI Archaeology: Reading Ancient Texts With Cutting Edge Technology
Recent advances in artificial intelligence and computation have enabled an impossible feat dreamed about for thousands of years - the recovery of lost texts from antiquity. In this talk, we will describe how a library destroyed in the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius is on track to being understood after 1700 years underground and 270 years of mostly failed attempts. Combining high resolution synchrotron X-ray CT scanning and a race to develop software, the effort yielded thousands of characters on Epicurean philosophy, with the promise of millions more to come.
About the speakers:
Casey Handmer is the founder of Terraform Industries, a company building synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air. He has worked on optics, gravitation, magnetic machinery, astrophysics, GPS, planetary mapping, and scrolls.
Julian Schilliger is a Digital Archeologist. Digital archeology started for him as a balance during his studies at ETH Zurich (BSc Computer Science, MSc Robotics) and became a full-time job after winning the Vesuvius Challenge. He develops software that restores CT scans of ancient, rolled-up scrolls. He enjoys working with visual computing, machine learning and algorithms of all kinds. He develops new algorithms most efficiently outdoors in nature, for example on a hike.
Youssef Nader is an Egyptian computer scientist and a PhD student at the Freie University of Berlin, working on explainable AI and self-supervised learning. In 2023, Youssef led the Vesuvius Grand Prize winning team and developed 3D image segmentation models capable of retrieving more than 2,000 characters from ancient burnt scrolls.