An ancient language with nearly a million undeciphered texts just got a translator that does the job in seconds: A.I.

The article discusses the development of an artificial intelligence (A.I.) tool designed to translate Akkadian cuneiform, one of the world's oldest written languages, which has a vast number of untranslated texts. An interdisciplinary team, including a Google software engineer and an Assyriologist, created the A.I. model using existing translations, achieving high-quality translation scores on the Best Bilingual Evaluation Understudy 4 (BLEU4) scale. While the A.I. can quickly process and translate cuneiform texts, it still produces occasional errors and "hallucinations," necessitating human verification for accuracy. The tool is expected to assist researchers by providing preliminary translations that can be refined, potentially enhancing the understanding of ancient Mesopotamian history. [Extracted from the article]