Google DeepMind unveils Aeneas AI model, claims it can decipher ancient inscriptions in seconds
Aeneas is tailored to work with inscriptions that often lack comprehensive contextual details. By leveraging a combination of textual and visual data, the model can offer insights into Roman life and society. According to the blogpost, Google claims that this model achieves a 73 per cent accuracy rate in restoring gaps within inscriptions up to ten characters long, and a notable capability for dating texts, placing them within 13 years of historians' estimates. These capabilities make it a vital tool for exploring the Roman world through various inscriptions, from political graffiti to business transactions.The model has been tested on the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, a famous Roman inscription attributed to Emperor Augustus. Aeneas provided a distribution of possible dates, capturing different prevailing hypotheses in a quantitative manner. This demonstrates the model's ability to transform historical questions into a probabilistic framework, offering historians a new approach to longstanding debates. The use of "embeddings" helps in drawing connections, allowing historians to uncover deeper insights into historical contexts.Aeneas excels in geographical attribution through a multimodal generative neural network that analyses both text and images. Utilising the Latin Epigraphic Dataset (LED) with over 1,76,000 inscriptions, Aeneas offers a more precise grouping of texts by date than other models. This integration of AI into historical workflows exemplifies the synergy between machine learning and expert knowledge, fostering a collaborative research environment.The model is accessible through an interactive platform available to researchers and educators, aligning with initiatives to improve AI literacy. Aeneas supports the restoration of inscriptions with unknown gap lengths, a critical feature for managing severely damaged texts. Its ability to search for "parallels" enriches the understanding of Roman society and its geographical expanse, significantly enhancing historical inquiry.Developed in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, and partners from the Universities of Warwick, Oxford, and Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), Aeneas represents a concerted effort to harness AI for historical research. This collaboration highlights a broader initiative to enable historians to identify and interpret parallels at scale, providing starting points for inquiry and innovation.Aeneas' developers are committed to enhancing the model's versatility through a new teaching syllabus designed to integrate technical skills with historical analysis. This initiative supports AI literacy and aligns with European educational frameworks, providing educational resources that bridge technical and historical disciplines.As Aeneas becomes an integral part of historical research, its capabilities in processing multimodal inputs and restoring texts of unknown length will prove indispensable. By transforming historical analysis into a more quantitative and interpretable process, Aeneas promises to unlock new perspectives on ancient societies, ensuring that the legacies of past civilisations can be explored and understood in innovative ways.- EndsMust Watch
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