There has been much handwringing over the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). Many college professors abhor it, thinking it has only a huge downside in that it enables students to cheat more easily.
That’s one view, but in today’s Martin Center article, Jacob Bruggeman sees good coming from AI. Rather than destroying the humanities, AI applications can enable new discoveries.
He writes:
Some scholars and writers reject the new technology outright as antithetical to their pursuits as humanists, assuming that AI represents vulgar techniques that cheapen the craft or noisy machines that disturb the garden. Amidst the handwringing, however, a cutting-edge team of researchers has harnessed AI to generate field-shaping discoveries promising to shore up humanistic pursuits within the Ivory Tower.
In particular, AI is proving able to unlock secrets buried long ago. Case in point: scrolls found at Herculaneum, covered in volcanic ash since 79 a.d. Here’s the story:
In March 2023, University of Kentucky computer scientist Brent Seales and entrepreneurs Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross launched the Vesuvius Challenge. The challenge equipped competitors with new software and thousands of 3D, X-ray images of the Herculaneum scrolls and offered $1 million in prizes to researchers. The grand prize, a whopping $700,000, would go to competitors who deciphered, at a minimum of 85-percent readability, four passages from scroll images, with each passage totaling a minimum of 140 characters.
This has turned out very well, Bruggeman reports. Like most things, AI has its upsides and downsides, and the trick is to take advantage of the former while minimizing the latter.
Read the whole thing.