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AI reads text from ancient Herculaneum scroll for the first time
(www.nature.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Note that the AI discussed in the article wasn’t translating anything. It was determining what was written in the original language by using scans of sections of the scroll, taking into account patterns (the “crackle”), differences in texture, etc., that hadn’t been leveraged in this way before.
Otherwise you’re spot on - it was trained on other similar scans that exhibited those patterns where the written text was already known.