WEBVTT 00:00:04.140 --> 00:00:08.774 Youssef: We always think about the potential of AI changing the future. 00:00:08.774 --> 00:00:12.424 But what about the potential of AI changing the past? 00:00:12.424 --> 00:00:14.554 My name is Youssef Nader. 00:00:14.554 --> 00:00:16.434 I'm an Egyptian AI researcher 00:00:16.434 --> 00:00:19.281 and a PhD student at the Free University in Berlin 00:00:19.281 --> 00:00:24.501 and last year, I led the Vesuvius Grand Prize winning team 00:00:24.501 --> 00:00:26.839 on exploring this very question. 00:00:27.780 --> 00:00:32.260 You see, the story starts almost 2,000 years ago. 00:00:32.260 --> 00:00:35.780 A Greek philosopher that we believe was Philodemus of Gadara 00:00:35.780 --> 00:00:39.780 sat in one of the many rooms of the Villa dei Papiri. 00:00:39.795 --> 00:00:43.205 He talked about music, he talked about pleasure, 00:00:43.205 --> 00:00:45.385 he talked about what makes things enjoyable, 00:00:45.385 --> 00:00:47.795 questions that still plague us until today. 00:00:50.061 --> 00:00:53.561 One of his scribes wrote down his thoughts on sheets of papyrus. 00:00:54.471 --> 00:00:58.661 The sheets were rolled and stowed away for later generations. 00:00:59.923 --> 00:01:03.923 Fast-forward 150 years, or even more 00:01:04.216 --> 00:01:09.436 Mount Vesuvius erupts, burying Herculaneum, the villa 00:01:09.436 --> 00:01:14.526 and the words of the philosopher under a sea of hot mud and ashes. 00:01:15.435 --> 00:01:18.395 Now fast-forward again, to the 17th century. 00:01:18.395 --> 00:01:21.085 People are excavating around the area. 00:01:21.085 --> 00:01:25.805 They found beautiful statues, breathtaking frescoes 00:01:25.805 --> 00:01:29.295 and some weird-looking pieces of charcoal, 00:01:29.295 --> 00:01:31.485 like you see in this picture. 00:01:31.742 --> 00:01:34.392 This is when the first scrolls were discovered, 00:01:34.392 --> 00:01:37.862 and people were racing to excavate more of these. 00:01:38.052 --> 00:01:42.382 What knowledge is included that is not known to us now? 00:01:42.382 --> 00:01:46.032 What things should we know about these scrolls? 00:01:49.072 --> 00:01:53.642 Julian: My name is Julian, and I am a digital archaeologist. 00:01:55.417 --> 00:02:00.287 When the pyroclastic flow hit the scrolls, 00:02:00.287 --> 00:02:02.497 it had a destructive effect. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:03.297 --> 00:02:05.487 It tore into them, 00:02:05.487 --> 00:02:07.207 shredded off pieces, 00:02:07.207 --> 00:02:09.427 and it charred them badly. 00:02:09.613 --> 00:02:12.323 Even the deformation that you can see 00:02:12.662 --> 00:02:14.482 happened at that point. 00:02:14.653 --> 00:02:18.063 People, 250-something years ago, 00:02:18.313 --> 00:02:21.923 were curious what's lying inside those scrolls, 00:02:22.033 --> 00:02:25.013 hidden and not accessible anymore. 00:02:25.879 --> 00:02:27.909 Because of a lack of technology, 00:02:27.909 --> 00:02:31.949 they had to resort to physically unrolling 00:02:31.949 --> 00:02:35.499 and thereby destroying most of the scrolls. 00:02:36.086 --> 00:02:37.436 To this day, 00:02:37.436 --> 00:02:40.997 only the most damaged and deformed scrolls 00:02:40.997 --> 00:02:44.717 remain in their initial, rolled-up configuration. 00:02:45.407 --> 00:02:47.847 Fast-forwarding a little bit, 00:02:47.847 --> 00:02:49.957 the computer age arrives. 00:02:49.957 --> 00:02:52.427 Youssef and I are born. 00:02:53.107 --> 00:02:55.757 We are going on and getting our education -- 00:02:55.757 --> 00:02:56.819 (Julian Chuckles) 00:02:56.819 --> 00:02:57.749 (Audience Laughs) 00:02:57.749 --> 00:03:02.049 and well... at the same time, Brent Seales, 00:03:02.049 --> 00:03:03.899 a researcher and professor, 00:03:03.899 --> 00:03:07.119 had the idea to use CT scan technology 00:03:07.119 --> 00:03:10.259 to actually digitilize the scrolls, 00:03:10.259 --> 00:03:12.179 with the hope of, one day, 00:03:12.179 --> 00:03:15.549 digitally unrolling them. 00:03:16.078 --> 00:03:19.738 Behind me, you can see a video of such a CT scan, 00:03:19.738 --> 00:03:22.928 and it goes through the CT scan 3D volume, 00:03:22.928 --> 00:03:24.178 layer by layer. 00:03:24.705 --> 00:03:28.555 The papyrus is visible as a spiral, 00:03:28.555 --> 00:03:31.265 and you can see it's tightly wound-up, 00:03:31.265 --> 00:03:34.265 sometimes touching each other, flaying off. 00:03:34.265 --> 00:03:38.265 It's a difficult question, how to unroll this digitally. 00:03:38.697 --> 00:03:42.107 Nat Friedman, a Silicon Valley investor, 00:03:42.107 --> 00:03:45.757 also saw this research, and he wanted to help. 00:03:46.395 --> 00:03:48.525 That was in 2022. 00:03:48.593 --> 00:03:52.023 He reached out, and together with Brent Seales, 00:03:52.023 --> 00:03:54.413 they created the Vesuvius Challenge, 00:03:54.863 --> 00:04:00.113 with the goal to motivate nerds all over the world to solve this problem. 00:04:00.486 --> 00:04:02.051 (Julian chuckles) 00:04:02.051 --> 00:04:03.781 They created a grand prize, 00:04:03.781 --> 00:04:07.251 promising eternal glory and monetary incentives 00:04:07.251 --> 00:04:08.941 to anyone who could do that 00:04:08.941 --> 00:04:10.894 (Julian Chuckles) 00:04:10.894 --> 00:04:13.274 I myself saw that on the internet 00:04:13.274 --> 00:04:17.284 while writing my master's thesis at ETH Zurich, in robotics 00:04:17.284 --> 00:04:20.524 and I was instantly happy to solve it-- 00:04:20.524 --> 00:04:23.073 or at least try, why not, you know? 00:04:23.073 --> 00:04:26.843 And I went on, joined the Discord community 00:04:26.843 --> 00:04:29.743 where all the people that were also contestants 00:04:29.743 --> 00:04:31.343 and playing with the scroll data 00:04:31.343 --> 00:04:33.373 were exchanging ideas 00:04:33.373 --> 00:04:36.483 and I joined there and started working on it. 00:04:37.463 --> 00:04:39.423 Also there, on Discord, 00:04:39.423 --> 00:04:41.193 I met Youssef and Luke [Farritor], 00:04:41.193 --> 00:04:42.656 who would become my teammates, 00:04:42.656 --> 00:04:45.596 and with whom I would actually win the grand prize. 00:04:46.136 --> 00:04:50.126 Surprisingly, it went on, and made global headline news. 00:04:50.465 --> 00:04:52.815 It even got into the British tabloids. 00:04:53.273 --> 00:04:56.043 (Audience Laughs) 00:04:56.043 --> 00:05:00.572 So when we started, there were two main problems still remaining. 00:05:00.996 --> 00:05:03.716 One, you had to unroll the scroll. 00:05:03.748 --> 00:05:07.081 And two, you then had to make the ink visible. 00:05:07.169 --> 00:05:09.919 Youssef will tell you more about that part.