Author’s voice: This web content provides an update on the Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize, which involved reading 2,000-year-old scrolls that were buried by a volcanic eruption. The scrolls, which discuss topics like music and food, were carbonized and cannot be opened. However, a team of researchers launched the challenge to find a way to read them. Through a global collaborative effort, the team succeeded in reading a portion of the scrolls using high-resolution CT scans and advanced computer vision techniques. The winning submission, by a team of three, stood out among other submissions for its readability and accurate results. The content of the scrolls revealed philosophical discussions on pleasure and the value of life. The web content also highlights the measures taken to ensure the accuracy of the images produced and addresses potential concerns of cheating or hallucinations by the machine learning models used in the process. Overall, this update celebrates the progress made in unlocking the ancient knowledge preserved in the scrolls.
https://scrollprize.org/grandprize