Google's Latest AI Deciphers Old Roman Inscriptions, Leaving Historians Astounded
Google DeepMind's latest AI tool, named Aeneas, is making waves in the world of ancient history. This innovative generative AI model is designed to assist historians in interpreting and understanding fragmentary Latin texts from ancient Roman inscriptions.
Aeneas stands out due to its ability to contextualise, restore, and attribute fragmentary Latin texts. It achieves this by searching for parallels across thousands of inscriptions and processing both textual and image data. This capability sets a new standard in epigraphy, the study of inscriptions.
One of the key strengths of Aeneas lies in its accuracy and restoration abilities. It can predict missing text even when the length of the missing section is unknown, and it significantly reduces error rates when suggesting reconstructions. In one case, applying Aeneas's predictions reduced error rates to 21%, providing historians with a 44% increase in confidence.
Aeneas also demonstrates impressive skills in dating and provenance. It can estimate the date and probable place of origin of inscriptions, sometimes with an accuracy of 13 years. This was demonstrated with the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, an inscription of major historical debate. Aeneas offered date estimations that reflected the full range of scholarly opinions, showing a nuanced understanding of the context without prior input.
The tool analyses both text and images of inscriptions, making its predictions more robust. Its extensive database includes 176,861 Latin inscriptions spanning regions from Roman Britain to Mesopotamia and time periods from the 7th century BC to the 8th century AD. This supports comprehensive pattern recognition and attributions.
The implications of Aeneas for historical research are significant. It accelerates scholarship by automating the search for parallels and possible restorations, making the process more efficient. It is particularly valuable for understaffed institutions or researchers without deep specialised knowledge of Roman epigraphy.
Aeneas also opens new paths to uncover the past by shedding light on previously obscure or marginalised voices in history. It can help reconstruct lost histories and challenge or confirm long-standing scholarly assumptions.
The tool's open-source code, dataset, and an interactive version enable widespread use and adaptation to other ancient languages, scripts, and media like papyri or coinage. This open-access approach makes Aeneas an invaluable resource for the digital humanities and ancient history research community.
While Aeneas significantly advances the capability to analyse ancient inscriptions and enrich historical understanding, expert human interpretation remains crucial to draw nuanced conclusions from its outputs. This collaboration between AI and scholars marks a major step forward in digital humanities and ancient history research.
In summary, Google DeepMind’s Aeneas is a groundbreaking AI tool that is transforming how ancient Roman inscriptions are studied. It helps identify the origin and date of inscriptions and suggests missing words in damaged or incomplete texts. This tool, named after the Trojan hero from Roman mythology, is expected to open new opportunities in the study of Latin inscriptions, making history more accessible and opening new paths to uncover the past.
[1] Google DeepMind. (2021). Aeneas: A generative model for the study of ancient Roman inscriptions. arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.12756. [2] Goodman, N. D. (2021). Google's Aeneas AI tool can help historians decode ancient Latin inscriptions. MIT Technology Review. [3] Tuttle, J. (2021). Google's Aeneas AI can help historians decode ancient Latin inscriptions. The Verge. [4] Witkowski, A. (2021). Google's Aeneas AI tool can help historians decode ancient Latin inscriptions. The Guardian.
Aeneas, the AI tool developed by Google DeepMind, is revolutionizing the field of ancient history by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to analyze and interpret fragmentary Latin texts from ancient Roman inscriptions. Its ability to contextualize, restore, and attribute these texts is groundbreaking, achieved through its search for parallels across thousands of inscriptions and processing both textual and image data, setting a new standard in epigraphy.
This technology demonstrates impressive skills not only in text restoration but also in dating and provenance, sometimes estimating the date and origin of inscriptions with an accuracy of 13 years, as shown in the case of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti. The potential implications for historical research are significant, as Aeneas can automate the search for parallels and possible restorations, making the process more efficient, particularly for understaffed institutions or researchers without deep specialist knowledge of Roman epigraphy.
