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.

  • 𝕊𝕚𝕤𝕪𝕡𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕟MEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’ve found that after using it for a while, I developed a feel for the complexity of the tasks it can handle. If I aim below this level, its output is very good most of the time. But I have to decompose the problem and make it solve the subproblems one by one.

    (The complexity ceiling is much higher for GPT-4, so I use it almost exclusively.)