In this episode, we take a deep dive into the Vesuvius Challenge, which combines ancient history with AI to resurrect an ancient library that was buried in the ashes of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Thought to be lost forever, these scrolls were completely turned to charcoal and are impossible to unroll without destroying them.

We focus on how a team of three university students used a combination of machine learning, computer vision, and X-ray tomography to win the Grand Prize in 2023. We unpack this technical breakthrough, from using an optical flow segmentation algorithm to virtually unroll the scrolls, to training a TimeSformer model to detect the invisible, carbon-based ink.

We also uncover the historical significance of the newly deciphered texts, which belong to the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara. It's a journey into a world where AI is not only recovering a lost library but also creating a new methodology — a sort of "Rosetta Stone"— that could be used to decipher other ancient, fragile documents.

The Vesuvius Challenge is ongoing, and there are still prizes to be won! 

Links and references:

Grand Prize 2023: https://scrollprize.org/grandprize

Fragments: https://scrollprize.org/data_fragments

Segments: https://scrollprize.org/data_segments

Scrolls: https://scrollprize.org/data_scrolls

Open prizes: https://scrollprize.org/prizes 

Youseff's explanation of his winning ink detection setup: https://youssefnader.com/2024/02/06/the-ink-detection-journey-of-the-vesuvius-challenge/