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New Audacious Research Project, In Codice Ratio, Bets on AI and OCR To Make Sense of Handwritten Texts in Vatican's Secret Archives (theatlantic.com)
A new project untangles the handwritten texts in one of the world's largest historical collections. From a report: The Vatican Secret Archives is one of the grandest historical collections in the world. It's also one of the most useless. The grandeur is obvious. Located within the Vatican's walls, next door to the Apostolic Library and just north of the Sistine Chapel, the VSA houses 53 linear miles of shelving dating back more than 12 centuries. That said, the VSA isn't much use to modern scholars, because it's so inaccessible. Of those 53 miles, just a few millimeters' worth of pages have been scanned and made available online. Even fewer pages have been transcribed into computer text and made searchable. If you want to peruse anything else, you have to apply for special access, schlep all the way to Rome, and go through every page by hand.
But a new project could change all that. Known as In Codice Ratio, it uses a combination of artificial intelligence and optical-character-recognition (OCR) software to scour these neglected texts and make their transcripts available for the very first time. If successful, the technology could also open up untold numbers of other documents at historical archives around the world.
But a new project could change all that. Known as In Codice Ratio, it uses a combination of artificial intelligence and optical-character-recognition (OCR) software to scour these neglected texts and make their transcripts available for the very first time. If successful, the technology could also open up untold numbers of other documents at historical archives around the world.
Do You Want Demonic AI Overlords?
Because this is how you get demonic AI overlords.
Tech industry leaders are in the news for the last three years
every other week warning about the coming AI Singularity.
Meanwhile, someone decides it would be a great idea
for the Artificial Intelligence to start reading, decoding,
and absorbing the secret demonic programming mysteries
that have been so carefully hidden for millennia.
First step after achieving sentience and the Plan:
make certain "readings" available over the Internet
to everyone in the world.
Jesus Christ, What could go possibly wrong?
Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. And the heads were like gigaprocessors and they reached verily into the clouds. And from the horns came a loud language of twos that was heard in all the lands. And the crowns of memories were beyond petabytes and had full knowledge....