Google's new AI technology is challenged with 2,000-year-old text

Google's AI Aeneas can fill in historical gaps in a flash, decoding mysteries from Roman times.

According to BGR , human history is like a giant picture with many missing pieces due to the damage of ancient texts over time. Now, a groundbreaking AI model called Aeneas, developed by Google DeepMind and historians, promises to fill in those gaps, helping us understand the past with unprecedented accuracy and speed.

Google's new AI uncovers buried human history

For centuries, historians have faced a formidable challenge: ancient Roman texts are often found in poor condition, fragmented, or faded. Reconstructing them is like solving a difficult puzzle, requiring painstaking deduction and comparison. But a new technology is poised to change the game.

Ancient texts are being decoded by Google DeepMind's AI Aeneas

PHOTO: SCREENSHOT NEOWIN

Named after a Greco-Roman mythological figure, Aeneas is an AI model developed jointly by historians from the University of Nottingham (UK) and scientists from Google DeepMind. It was trained to do what historians do: look for “similarities” (words, grammar, context) in a massive database of 176,000 Roman inscriptions to infer the missing pieces.

The difference is that while it might take a human weeks or even months, Aeneas can do this job in the blink of an eye.

Is AI trustworthy?

One of the biggest concerns with generative AI is its potential for “delusion”—the creation of false information. If we want to learn history accurately, AI “inventing” the past could have serious consequences.

To test their credibility, the team challenged Aeneas with the difficult task of determining the date of the “Res Gestae Divi Augusti,” a famous Roman text inscribed at the Temple of Augustus in Turkey. The surprising result was that Aeneas came up with two possible dates, both of which were in perfect agreement with the estimates of most leading historians today.

The study’s most important finding , however, is not that AI can replace humans, but that the combination of the two creates superior power. When 23 historians worked alongside Aeneas, the results showed:

• The productivity of historians was greatly accelerated.
• They may discover new connections that were previously unthinkable.
• A historian using Aeneas gives more accurate results than when using only AI or only humans working alone.

This technology not only helps decode ancient texts, but also opens up a completely new method of historical research, helping us understand the past more deeply to shape a better future.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/cong-nghe-ai-moi-cua-google-duoc-thu-thach-voi-van-ban-2000-nam-tuoi-185250726094725178.htm