Understanding Aeneas: How AI is Reshaping the Study of Ancient Latin Inscriptions
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) typically promises to revolutionize our understanding of the future, but exciting new research suggests its capabilities extend to enhancing our comprehension of the past as well. By leveraging AI technologies, historians can now unlock secrets hidden in ancient texts, making previously challenging research tasks more manageable and accessible.
The Birth of Aeneas
Aeneas, developed by a collaborative team from Google DeepMind, classical scholars, and archaeologists from esteemed universities in the UK and Greece, has emerged as a game-changing machine-learning system for those studying Latin inscriptions. Named after the legendary hero of Rome’s founding epic, Aeneas breathes new life into the study of inscriptions dating from the 7th century BCE to the 8th century CE.
Equipped with sophisticated algorithms, Aeneas doesn’t just analyze texts; it retrieves contextual and textual parallels and generates speculative text to fill in gaps within fragmentary inscriptions. This result is particularly appealing for epigraphers—scholars who specialize in interpreting inscriptions—who often grapple with incomplete evidence.
Proven Effectiveness
To gauge Aeneas’s effectiveness, researchers conducted trials involving 23 participants with varying levels of epigraphical expertise, from master’s students to seasoned professors. In a simulated research environment under time constraints, participants found Aeneas’s outputs to be incredibly valuable. Remarkably, 90% of the historians reported that the parallels provided by Aeneas served as effective starting points for their subsequent research.
Moreover, Aeneas significantly boosted researchers’ confidence in their work, improving their performance on essential tasks by 44%. Notably, when tasked with restoring partial inscriptions or determining their origins, scholars using Aeneas outshone both human-only and AI-only approaches. When estimating the age of inscriptions, Aeneas’s accuracy was impressive—achieving results averaged within 13 years of known dates established by historians.
The Technology’s Strengths and Limitations
While Aeneas excels in certain areas, it performs variably across different regions and time periods. As expected, its efficacy is greater for inscriptions from periods with abundant evidence and accurately dated records. Nevertheless, historians highlighted Aeneas’s unique ability to uncover significant parallels and overlooked textual details that might otherwise remain hidden.
This capacity to explore broader connections helps refine scholars’ inquiries, preventing them from veering into overly specific or irrelevant findings. In an academic landscape notoriously fraught with specialization, Aeneas serves as a crucial tool for expanding searches and broadening perspectives.
Speeding Up the Research Process
Aeneas promises to drastically accelerate the time-intensive process of preliminary analysis in epigraphy. Traditionally, developing expertise in this intricate field takes years, as scholars often become deeply specialized. With Aeneas, researchers can swiftly sift through vast amounts of evidence to identify potential parallels or related texts that may be missed when examining fragmentary materials.
Additionally, Aeneas’s capabilities extend to locating inscriptions geographically and providing estimates on their production dates. Its knack for predicting missing segments of fragmentary texts—regardless of the length of the inscription lost—adds an intriguing layer to its functionalities. While this feature can spark creativity in text reconstruction, it also carries the risk of leading researchers to unwarranted conclusions, similar to speculative restoration by human experts.
The Essential Role of Human Expertise
While Aeneas offers groundbreaking advancements, it’s essential to recognize its limitations. The system can provide “useful research starting points,” but it does not absolve researchers of the intricate task of data interpretation. Scholars must still verify Aeneas’s findings against standard references and, whenever possible, original artifacts or images.
The success of Aeneas lies not in replacing the human element but in augmenting it. Scholars with the appropriate knowledge remain integral to the research process; they are vital in interpreting the results Aeneas generates. By broadening their scope and enhancing retrieval speed, Aeneas empowers epigraphers to escape the traditional confines of their geographic and temporal expertise, ultimately revealing a wealth of undiscovered connections in the annals of history.