New AI Tool Helps Unlock Secrets Of The Past By Translating Age-Old Cuneiform
Artificial intelligence recently helped archeologists understand an ancient cuneiform, one of the oldest forms of writing. Cuneiforms are extremely hard to read, and only a handful of people around the world are able to decipher what these clay inscriptions mean.
Archaeologists and computer scientists from Israel created an AI-powered translation to to translate an ancient Akkadian cuneiform. With this tool, thousands of such cuneiform tablets could be translated to English quickly.
AI translates ancient texts
Translating Akkadian text can be extremely difficult, considering the language hasn't been spoken or written in over 2,000 years. Owing to this gap, only a small fraction of such tablets have been translated. According to the Times of Israel, museums around the world have about half a million clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform.
With a new programme that operates like Google Translate, understanding these old texts has become easier. According to Gai Gutherz, a computer scientist involved in the creation of this tool, the operator doesn't need to understand Akkadian to translate these clay tests into English.
Also read:?Google Bans Internal Use Of AI Chatbots, Including Its Own Bard: Report
The project started as Gutherz's thesis at Tel Aviv University. The findings from the team's study were published in a research paper in the journal PNAS Nexus.?
The tool is built on neural machine translation, the same mechanism used by Google Translate and other tools that offer quick translation. Such tools convert words into a string of numbers that are run through a mathematical formula (or a neural network) to generate a sentence in a different language.
Between 3,000 BCE and 100 CE, Akkadian was written and spoken in Mesopotamia and the Middle Easy. By 600 BCE, the language had been replaced by Aramaic in terms of usage and reach.
Also read:?Misinformation Threatens Society's Future: Black Mirror Creator Warns Of AI's Dark Side
Akkadian cuneiform represent the earliest written languages ever discovered. The team behind this tool is also sharing its opensource research online, hoping to create translation programmes for other ancient languages.
The tool is quite effective, too. Its creators say that there were more instances of hallucinations (false information) when translating literary and poetic texts, but it provided more accurate results while translating common texts.
What do you think about this use of AI? Let us know in the comments below.?For more in the world of?technology?and?science, keep reading?Indiatimes.com.
