Source details
- Original source
- The Rundown AI
- Published
- 2026-07-07
- Primary topic
- AI Policy
Why it matters
Regulation, copyright, courts, government action, and policy developments affecting AI deployment. This item originated as a short-form social post, so the context blocks below help expand it into tools, models, and evaluation guides.
What happened
The Vesuvius Challenge is paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to anyone who can read scrolls no human has been able to open for 2,000 years. The Herculaneum scrolls were burned into solid charcoal when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, burying a luxury Roman villa and its entire library. Trying to unroll one makes it flake apart and disintegrate. Launched in 2023, the contest cracks them with AI instead: high-resolution X-ray scans, plus machine learning trained to detect traces of ancient ink in the fibers. It built on a breakthrough by computer scientist Brent Seales, who first proved the hidden writing could be read without ever touching it. Now, one scroll has been virtually unwrapped, revealing 20 columns of text across more than a meter of charred papyrus. It turned out to be a work on stoic philosophy, possibly written by an ancient Greek philosopher. With the method proven, the race is now on to read hundreds more. Video
What to do next
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The Vesuvius Challenge is paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to anyone who can read scrolls no human has been able to open for 2,000 years. The Herculaneum scrolls were burned into solid charcoal when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, burying a luxury Roman villa and its entire library. Trying to unroll one makes it flake apart and disintegrate. Launched in 2023, the contest cracks them with AI instead: high-resolution X-ray scans, plus machine learning trained to detect traces of ancient ink in the fibers. It built on a breakthrough by computer scientist Brent Seales, who first proved the hidden writing could be read without ever touching it. Now, one scroll has been virtually unwrapped, revealing 20 columns of text across more than a meter of charred papyrus. It turned out to be a work on stoic philosophy, possibly written by an ancient Greek philosopher. With the method proven, the race is now on to read hundreds more. Video
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