A 21-year-old college student won a prize of $40,000 when he used AI to decipher the word "purple" of Herculaneum.

Luke Farito, a 21-year-old college student and former SpaceX summer intern, used artificial intelligence to decipher a word in Herculaneum's scrolls and won a $40,000 First Letters Prize prize, CTOnews.com reported on October 14.

To further advance their findings and invite other scientists to decode the scrolls, tech entrepreneurs Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross held the Vesuvius Challenge Challenge in March, with a total prize pool of $700000, encouraging contestants to use high-tech interpretation of ancient books such as Herculaneum.

Photo Source: the Nature Challenge requires contestants to find at least 10 letters in an area of 4 square centimeters. CTOnews.com note: Herculaneum scrolls have been unreadable since the volcanic eruption in 79 AD, which buried the nearby ancient city of Pompeii. This breakthrough may open hundreds of texts in the only well-preserved library in ancient Greece and Rome.

Image source: Nature Farito developed a machine learning algorithm that detected several lines of Greek letters on rolled-up papyrus, including π "ρ j" p α "(porphyras), which means" purple ". Farritor uses the nuances of surface textures to train neural networks and highlight ink.