[HN Gopher] AI models makes precise copies of cuneiform characters
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AI models makes precise copies of cuneiform characters
Author : geox
Score : 64 points
Date : 2025-03-04 19:01 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.cornell.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.cornell.edu)
| yannis wrote:
| Very interesting approach and perhaps a good step towards
| transliteration and translation of cuneiform tablets. Code and
| links for paper at https://github.com/TAU-
| VAILab/ProtoSnap/tree/main
| frozenport wrote:
| It looks very adhoc
|
| So ideally the ml network would solve the problem end to end
| but these authors seem to be using a network for only one step
| of their otherwise classic image processing pipeline
| bravura wrote:
| What a smear.
|
| A lot of applied work in vision and audio glues together
| different existing modules, instead of training the whole
| thing end-to-end.
|
| In an ideal world, things are ideal. But the world isn't a
| grad student's wet dream.
|
| But there are not as many influential papers in the world as
| there are people who respond: "Why didn't they train the
| whole thing end-to-end?"
| stavros wrote:
| "Ideally they'd solve the whole problem, but it looks like
| they just solved one part of the problem"
| instakill wrote:
| Nice, now can any cuneiform nerds that have an interest in Ramses
| III guide me to any quote that roughly translates to "violence is
| necessary against Isfet". For the life of me, I cannot seem to
| find any reference to it although I've got it in my notes from...
| somewhere?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Grok 3 says "For instance, in the Poem of Pentaur, a
| propagandistic account of the Battle of Kadesh, Ramses II is
| depicted as a heroic figure restoring order against the chaotic
| Hittite forces. While it doesn't say "violence is necessary
| against Isfet" verbatim, the subtext is that decisive action,
| including violence, was justified to crush disorder and uphold
| Ma'at."
|
| (It had earlier defined Ma'at as "order, balance, and justice")
| CaffeineLD50 wrote:
| Awesome.
|
| Now that archeologists are more productive with AI they can fire
| 20% of the staff over hired during covid, and give massive
| bonuses to the executives running museums and archeology
| departments.
|
| Archeologists who stay can expect smaller stock grants, too.
|
| Now get back to work before Elon gets here and demands 60+ hr
| workweeks and requires all 401k plans to be converted to
| DOGEcoin.
|
| Because a man who hypes Social Security "as a ponzi scheme" knows
| that crypto is a _good business proposition_.
| qoez wrote:
| You should take a month break from reading twitter for your own
| health
| thechao wrote:
| Translation of cuneiform is limited by the number of people who
| know the different Semitic and nonsemitic languages. Bulk
| transcription of the texts just makes the amount of material
| available to translate even more overwhelming.
|
| The real revolution would be AI reconstruction of the 3d
| fragments and filtering of the bulk documents (receipts) from
| the interesting historical augments. (Hate mail, spam, poetry,
| death threats, omens, math, etc.)
| showerst wrote:
| The real revolution would be an end to end machine
| transliteration to translation pipeline.
|
| ...Which will require lots of sample data for all the steps.
| wbl wrote:
| Humans learn these languages from tiny samples+structured
| practice and dictionaries. Research required but AI could
| be similarly low info.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Not the place for that.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| 'Because a man who hypes Social Security "as a ponzi scheme" '
|
| The only thing that differentiates Social Security from a
| typical Ponzi scheme is that a typical Ponzi scheme is now
| illegal.
|
| Neither Boomers, Gen x, nor gen y, are paying enough
| contributions to meet their demands and are instead relying on
| contributions from future donors.
|
| That is indistinguishable from what Ponzi did.
| Isamu wrote:
| This is essentially OCR (optical cuneiform recognition) which can
| have specific challenges because the signs are 3 dimensional
| depressions in clay and present differently depending on the
| lighting and shadows which can be all over the place. The output
| is sort of standard rendering, it looks like they preserve the
| layout.
|
| Direct link to paper which has good illustrations: https://tau-
| vailab.github.io/ProtoSnap/
| geokon wrote:
| Chinese stele's are famously turned 2D through ink rubbing.
| Wonder if that'd simplify the task and at least provide a more
| consistent image to work off of (as compared to a randomly
| illuminated photo)
|
| Or another intermediary would be to train a model to transform
| photos to rubbing and have a more standard representation to
| work off of before training to recognize characters
| wbl wrote:
| The material of most inscriptions is dried clay: rubbing
| isn't possible without damage AFAIK.
| Retr0id wrote:
| You don't have to do the rubbing physically - if you can
| 3d-scan the surface you could do it digitally. But, giving
| the AI _less_ information to work with sounds like a step
| backwards.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Could you fine-tune a VLM that already does OCR well on
| cuneiform?
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