Gaps in what we know about ancient Romans could be filled by AI
But historian Prof Dame Mary Beard of Cambridge University has described the technology as potentially "transformative" to our study of past events.She said that the system, called Aeneas, after a Greek and Roman mythological figure, could accelerate the rate at which historians piece together the past from ancient texts."Breakthroughs in this very difficult field have tended to rely on the memory, the subjective judgement and the hunch/guesswork of individual scholars, supported by traditional, encyclopaedic databases. Aeneas opens up entirely new horizons."
Ancient inscriptions are usually incomplete, of unknown origin and date, and often all three. Historians and classicists attempt to fill in the blanks by drawing on texts that are similar in wording, grammar, appearance and cultural setting, known as 'parallels'. Ancient inscriptions tend to be formulaic so historians can often infer what the missing part of a sentence goes on to say.The process is painstaking and can take months and years but opens new vistas in our understanding of the past, according to Dr Thea Sommerschield, an historian at Nottingham University, who co-led the research."Inscriptions are the earliest forms of writing. They are so precious to historians because they offer first-hand evidence for ancient histories, languages and societies."But they degrade over the centuries and interpreting them is like solving a gigantic jigsaw puzzle with tens of thousands of pieces, of which 90 per cent are lost."
It's not the first time AI has been used to join up the missing dots in Roman history.Earlier this year, another team of scientists digitally "unwrapped" a badly burnt scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum using a combination of X-ray imaging and AI, revealing rows and columns of text.Dr Sommerschield developed Aeneas along with her co-research leader Dr Yannis Assael, an AI specialist at Google DeepMind. It automates the process of contextualising based on parallels, in the blink of an eye. Aeneas draws on a vast database of of 176,000 Roman inscriptions including images and uses a carefully designed AI system to pull up a range of relevant historical parallels, to support the work of historians, according to Dr Assael."What the historian can't do is assess these parallels in a matter of seconds across tens of thousands of inscriptions, and that is where AI can come in as an assistant."The team tested out the system in dating a famous Roman text at the Temple of Augustus in Ankara in Turkey, known as the queen of inscriptions because of its importance to our understanding of Roman history. The Res Gestae Divi Augusti was composed by the first Roman Emperor, Augustus, giving an account of his life and accomplishments. Its date is hotly contested among historians.Aeneas was able to narrow down the options to two possible ranges, the most likely being between 10 and 20 CE and a second slightly less likely range from 10 to 1 BCE. This showed the system's accuracy as most historians agree on these two as the most likely possibilities.
In tests of the system with 23 historians the team found that an historian working with Aeneas came up with more accurate results than either Aeneas on its own or an historian on their own. "The feedback was that Aeneas was not only allowing the historians to accelerate their work but it also revealed parallels that they had previously not identified," according to Dr Sommerschield."And that is the future value of this work, not just to do what we do faster and better but also to do things we didn't think to do before."AI interpretation of even modern texts can be glitchy, so there is concern that mistakes could be made. But according to Dr Assael, Aeneas is a tool to guide historians, not a replacement for them."We acknowledge that AI might not be able to get everything right all the time and I don't think historians will work under that expectation," he said.He said it would be down to human historians to weigh up Aeneus' predictions and decide which made more sense.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Scale AI competitor Micro1 raising funds at $500 million valuation, sources say
SAN FRANCISCO, July 28 (Reuters) - Scale AI competitor Micro1 is finalizing a Series A round valuing the startup at $500 million, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Micro1 provides data labeling services to artificial intelligence labs, a sector that has grown tremendously in recent years as high-quality, human-generated datasets have become more important in training advanced AI systems. Micro1 has capitalized on this trend by building an AI-powered recruitment engine enabling AI labs to target specialized experts instead of large pools of low-wage labor. The company has told investors it has crossed $50 million in annualized revenue, up from $10 million earlier this year, and is projecting it will cross $100 million in annualized revenue by the end of September, the sources said. Former Twitter COO Adam Bain joined its board recently, and venture capital firms 01A and LG Technology Ventures will invest in the round, the sources said. Micro1 has benefited from recent changes at San Francisco-based Scale AI, a data labeling company that provides infrastructure and services to help organizations accelerate the development of AI models. Scale AI recently lost customers after Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab poached its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to become Meta's chief AI officer, leading Meta's new Superintelligence Labs. Among the customers that have left or are planning to leave Scale AI are Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google and OpenAI, which are planning to move away over concerns that doing business with Scale could expose their research priorities to Meta. Another Scale AI competitor, Surge AI, is raising up to $1 , and raked in over $1 billion in revenue last year.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Grok's behavior isn't surprising – but we needn't settle for Musk's vision of the future
Elon Musk's chatbot Grok went on a hateful tirade earlier this month. The AI-powered account praised Hitler and posted a series of antisemitic comments over X, the digital platform also owned by Musk. The company's CEO, Linda Yaccarino, resigned the next day – though it's unclear whether her exit was directly related to the bot's rant. Posting on X, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said Grok's behavior was 'irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic'. xAI and the Grok account on X apologized for the incident, but days later released two chatbot 'companions', including an NSFW anime avatar available to children and a red panda character built to issue crude insults. Musk, meanwhile, chalked Grok's behavior up to it being 'too eager to please' and to responding to user-generated prompts. He said that the issue had been fixed. US politicians and platform advertisers said little, unlike past responses to similar incidents on X. Their silence and Musk's downplaying of the event speak louder than if we had heard significant public denunciations of the chatbot's actions from the powers that be. The relative quiet at the top is illustrative of two things. First, Grok's behavior is not surprising. At this point, it's predictable. Second, little about Grok, X, or xAI is likely to change in the short term. Grok sharing hateful content is Grok working precisely as it was designed to. Before the inflammatory chatbot was 'born' and launched on X in late 2023, Musk spoke about the need for AI alternatives to ChatGPT, which he deemed too politically correct. He has consistently referred to his anti-woke AI as 'TruthGPT'. Grok was deliberately built to be provocative – and 'to tell it like it is'. Grok is a fitting representation of the current culture of X and, more broadly, of social media and those at its reins. In the years since Musk purchased the internet platform, originally named Twitter, many have pointed out that it has devolved into a space rife with 'racism, misogyny, and lies'. It's also full of spam and scams. Shortly after the platform changed names and hands, most of the people behind content moderation and platform trust and safety were unceremoniously fired. Extremists and conspiracy theorists who had been deplatformed from Twitter were reinstated on X. In late 2024, the social media organization's first transparency report in years revealed serious problems with this new laissez-faire approach, including unsettling new instances of child exploitation. According to Musk, Grok was built to seek and reveal truths beyond the supposedly sanitized content seen on competing generative AI systems or prior social media platforms. But Grok what actually does is tell the 'truth' of the current hands-off, malignant, version of X, and of other social media platforms and tech leadership. Since Musk's acquisition of X – and the deregulation of content that followed – other platforms have followed suit. These shifts follow an executive order and other moves from the Trump administration aimed at curtailing 'censorship' through digital content moderation and, seemingly, the collaborative study of social media propaganda. Meanwhile, social media and AI companies are getting more cozy with Washington: xAI just signed a $200m contract with the Pentagon to provide 'Grok for government'. In past research, I've found that billionaires' and global political leaders' claims about striking down digital media censorship and preserving free speech online are often suspect at best. At worst, and closer to what I've encountered in my analyses, such claims are self-serving for those in power. These figures not only own a significant stake in the digital information environment; they have also purposefully and steadily cultivated the online space to be favorable to their goals and ideas. They seek to artificially control what trends, or what people see as popular behavior, and to make such statements or actions acceptable. But an online world where hate, spam and scams run rampant is only one version of what the internet and digital media technology can be. The opposite, as Musk and others in Silicon Valley and Washington have rightfully pointed out, is an overtly censored online space. China's internet and social media platforms, for instance, have been tightly controlled by the government since the outset. We do not have to accept either extreme. Empirical research and lessons from recent history show us that we can indeed have healthier, more connective, communication tools. We can have social media platforms that are sensibly and systematically moderated from both the top down and bottom up. But to have such spaces we must demand better, more thoughtful, content moderation and tool design from technologists and policymakers. We must also break big tech's stranglehold on innovation in the social media space. Too much power online is consolidated in the hands of too few companies and individuals. We need new digital platforms that genuinely center human rights, pluralism and democratic discourse, and better policies that allow for such an experience. Samuel Woolley is the author Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity and co-author of Bots. He is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
New drug could halt Alzheimer's
A new drug could halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Trials suggest the treatment, called trontinemab, could be the most powerful weapon yet against dementia. Research will now examine whether the drug should be given to those without any symptoms in order to prevent the disease. Results presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Toronto found the 'game-changing' treatment can clear the devastating plaques associated with Alzheimer's far more rapidly than any current licensed drug. Nine in 10 patients prescribed trontinemab experienced amyloid clearance within 28 weeks, meaning visible markers of disease had vanished. Experts hope these changes will be matched by improvements in memory and functioning, with an 18-month trial of 1,600 patients now under way. Separate research will examine whether the drug could be given to people without any signs of dementia, in the same way that statins are used to ward off heart disease. On Monday, experts said the findings were 'very promising', suggesting that the drug was much more powerful than existing medications, with far fewer side effects. Around one million people in the UK suffer from dementia, with Alzheimer's disease the most common form. Powerful precise effects at low doses Trontinemab is one of a class of new medicines aimed at clearing amyloid plaques. The new findings from phase two trials suggest that, in less than seven months, it has outperformed the ability of existing drugs to clear plaques in 18 months. Experts hope that if given early enough, the drug could save some patients from developing symptoms at all. It has been engineered to more easily cross the blood-brain barrier, meaning it can ensure powerful precise effects at low doses. The lack of side effects means it could be offered to large populations. This also means it could be offered at a far lower price than current medications, which require intense monitoring, including regular scans. Experts believe it could become the first Alzheimer's drug to be funded by the NHS. Last year, medicines regulators in the UK gave the green light to the first two treatments found to slow progression of Alzheimer's disease. Both lecanemab and donanemab use monoclonal antibodies to clear amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease. In trials they have been found to slow decline by 27 per cent and 35 per cent respectively, over 18 months. However, the risk of brain swelling and brain bleeds means they need intense monitoring. The new drug appears to have a far better safety profile. The phase two trial of 149 patients found less than five per cent of cases suffering amyloid-related imaging abnormalities, and all cases quickly resolved. It also requires less frequent infusions, with mass trials to examine the impact of giving the drug to patients once a month for six months, then every three months. Scientists have been intrigued by the promise of trontinemab because of the way it has been designed to be transported across the blood brain-barrier, which normally prevents chemicals in the bloodstream from entering the brain. 'Game-changing' Prof Sir John Hardy,the chairman of molecular biology of neurological disease at University College London's Institute of Neurology said the advance could be 'game-changing'. He told The Telegraph: 'This is absolutely great news. It sucks the plaque out of the brain really quickly, much faster than we have seen with lecanemab or donanemab.' The scientist, who was the first to identify the role of amyloid in the disease, said the drug's safety profile was a 'massive improvement' on the current drugs on the market, raising hopes it could be used both to prevent disease and stop it in its tracks. He said: 'There is no doubt this could be game-changing. We hope that if we can use these drugs to people early, we can halt the progression of disease, even before people have symptoms. Now we need to see the size of the clinical effect.' Neither of the current drugs have been funded by the NHS as a result of their high costs, much of which stems from the need for intense monitoring, including regular scans. Prof Hardy said: 'These results show it is much faster and safer than previous drugs, which means less monitoring. That brings down the cost significantly, it means fewer MRI scans, so that would surely mean it would get Nice [National Institute of Health and Care Excellence] approval.' 'Very promising evidence' Prof Jonathan Schott, the chief medical officer at Alzheimer's Research UK said: 'We urgently need a range of treatments for Alzheimer's that are effective and safe for the people affected by this devastating disease. 'Evidence presented at the Alzheimer's Association conference in Toronto on trontinemab is very promising, showing that the drug can effectively and rapidly clear amyloid from the brain, seemingly with very few side effects. 'We now need to see whether these early stage results carry through to later stage clinical trials, which are planned to start later this year, including in the UK. These trials will show whether the drug is not only safe, but impacts on memory, thinking and quality of life.' He said it was 'exciting' that the drug would now be tested in some people without symptoms under the phase three trials. Levi Garraway, Roche's chief medical officer said: 'Combining new treatment avenues with advanced diagnostics may enable earlier and potentially more effective intervention. 'With plans for phase three trials in both early symptomatic and preclinical Alzheimer's disease, we are advancing science with the goal of delaying – and ultimately preventing – progression of this devastating condition.'
