Thousands of ancient cuneiform tablets remain untranslated. A team of researchers have developed an AI to unlock their secrets.

Researchers have unearthed hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets, but many remain untranslated. Translating an ancient language is a time-intensive process, and only a few hundred experts are qualified to perform it. A recent study describes a new AI that produces high-quality translations of ancient texts.

  • dandelo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    Google’s DeepMind was able to teach itself Indonesian without being directly trained on how to do so. Ancient Sumerian doesn’t seem too far fetched, all things considered!

    • grinde@programming.devEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      There was a funny bit on WANShow a few months back where they demonstrated tricking ChatGPT into speaking Dutch (I think. It might have been another language). It vehemently insisted that it didn’t know Dutch, and could only talk to them in English. The messages saying this were written in Dutch.